Stirling Engines

Have you ever heard of a stirling engine? They are really cool. They use difference in temperature to do work. Imagine a chamber that is tube shaped and has a piston in it. You create a difference in temperatures from one end to the other, either by heating or cooling or both. You might stick one end in your fire and the other in cool water, for example. When the hot air expands, it moves the piston one way, then a displacer pushes the hot air to the cold end where it contracts so there is less resistance for the piston to reciprocate. A flywheel carries the momentum.

Unfortunately, the work it does, is not cleaning the house.

She Must and Shall Go Free

By Derek Webb:

Lyrics:
Mercy speaks by Jesus’ blood
Hear and sing, ye sons of God
Justice satisfied indeed
Christ has full atonement made

Jesus’ blood speaks loud and sweet
Here all Deity can meet
And, without a jarring voice
Welcome Zion to rejoice

"All her debts were cast on me,
And she must and shall go free"

Peace of conscience, peace with God
We obtain through Jesus’ blood
Jesus’ blood speaks solid rest
We believe, and we are blest

Should the law against her roar
Jesus’ blood still speaks with power
"All her debts were cast on me,
and she must and shall go free"

Desiring God

Can "Desiring God" be just another thing you are trying to do in your own strength? If I don't desire God, where do I turn? Do I start with the emotional part of yearning and work to whip that up, or do I start with the cold hard facts about the desirability of God, and let my emotional chips fall where they may, while putting my feet in the steps that follow the reality of who God is and who I am.

I know that God says that to love him and each other is the highest law, and the way of the spirit is love. Surely desire is an aspect of love. But our relationship with God is responsive in its essence. No one comes to Jesus unless the Father draws him. Our entire walk with God is on HIS initiative, and Faith is our response to his lead. But even our response, our faith is a gift from him. He has prepared in advance good works for us to do. All the glory is his, all the goodness is His, and good things crafted in our life are by His hand, whether they be desire for God or righteous actions.

Just Clean the House

My husband is mad at me (again) because of the house. He has reasonable expectations, just wants it all clean once a month. I got it done last Christmas and it hasn't been all done since. This is a chronic ongoing issue for us. I am extremely distractable and I move slow, which means that my work time is not very productive, but all seven of us are very productive at taking things out!

I don't know why I don't keep a nice house. Lots of possible reasons--having mess means that I have a reason to get up in the morning (to clean it), leaving a bit of mess is a request for someone to step in and help me because I want to be rescued. Rebellion: I shouldn't have to perform to earn your approval, you should just love me because I'm me. Perfectionism: it isn't going to be perfect anyway, so why try? Distractable: I forgot I was cleaning the whatever. Mess filter: I don't see the mess, just whatever particular article that has drawn my focus. (I can't tell if my outfits look good either, because all I see is an earring, my hair, my make-up, my shoes one at a time.) There are various amounts of truth to each of those, but at this point in life, I just don't even care about the reasons. I don't see that understanding these reasons has gotten me any closer to a clean house.

They tell me that I'm "performance oriented." I think that is psychobabble for "legalistic." I want to prove that I'm something by my own actions. Unfortunately, all I've proved is that I'm nothing. And this, for some reason, is worse than the end of the world to me. I mean, duh! Of course I'm nothing! Isn't that why the grace of God is so miraculous?

The most productive season of my life (in terms of managing our home) came at a time when things were externally difficult. I was pregnant with number 4. God came to me in the middle of a movie. The image on the screen was just a man hugging a woman (a friend.) And God, in that moment, just revealed his love to me. I went an laid on the floor for I don't know how long. He satisfied my longing to be both the center and to be hidden. He convinced me in a moment that I was to Him, the Bride. The golden one. He revealed me as the adored daughter, swinging in her Father's arms. And he hid me in the folds of his robes, so close that I could twine my fingers in his beard and breathe his scent. I was protected and covered.

From that center of acceptance, running my race was so easy. All those reasons just fell by as irrelevant. For months, I could just do it, walking in peace. But then, my mom came and helped me out when my son was born, and something in that season washed it all away.

But the truth is still there. I wish I could find it again. My husband's anger and my desire to please, and my offense at his coldness trip me up in embracing truth. Yet there is always a way around temptation. Faith is always possible.

Draw Near

I haven't been on here as much. A few days ago a pair of scriptures kinda stuck to me, the first was this, from Mathew:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

The second one, now that I look, I seem to have misremembered. What I recalled was a rebuke to those that ask questions and don't listen to the answers.

I have fussed and asked and wrestled and wondered about many things. But here is the quiet and simple answer of Jesus: "Come to me." I am weak--unable to understand, unable to make up for my debts, unable to give something of real value on my own. And I'm weary and worn with the effort of doing so. I long for the rest Jesus offers. His yoke--walking in the steps he lays--makes me smile.

So, that's where my striving has been the last few days--not in wrestling with questions, but with being more quiet and drawing near in simpleness. On the inside. On the outside, I've been crazy busy with events and homeschool stuff AND reading a lovely novel.

Development of the Status Quo

I've been thinking more about the History of American Education. While I wouldn't doubt that public education was begun with mixed motives (creating unity/conformity from diversity, making good workers, benefitting the poor, etc.), I think that the history of public education is highly flavored with reactions to a changing culture. Our family life has broke down considerably in the last 150 years. The collective ability to focus has been severely eroded by entertainment and leisure. The concept of discipline has been vilified. The traditional leadership of a. men and b. adults is openly scorned. While these changes have brought some good things, the cumulative effect has been to dump a lot of kids in the school system who are insecurely rooted in their families, accustomed to information presented in flashy 15 second soundbites, and burdened with "let the children lead" pressure. The public schools have scrambled to deal with these realities, but there is no way for them to fix these problems. It is neither within the appropriate place of government to address them, nor within its effective power, because they are matters of the heart.

We, the people of America and the parents of the next generation, have the responsibility to create stable homes, to provide meaningful work, and to bring our kids into the freedom of healthy submission. So, if I were running for president, that's what I'd angle for. ;-)

Agenda of State Schooling

I am having a mini crisis over schooling my kids. My oldest two daughters participate in a state run school at home program. They are loaned laptop computers which run a fairly inane curriculum with click the bubble questions after each reading. A teacher comes to our home every few weeks to chat with us—she monitors their progress remotely the rest of the time, much more loosely than I do myself.

The problem is that I have begun reading The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto. It is a scathing indictment of the American compulsory school phenomenon, holding that public schools took a population that was nearly completely literate and dumbed them down to the point where average spelling is at the level of text messaging abbreviations. Gatto’s opinion appears to be that this was no accident: a large number of dumb, minimum wage workers are required to make the U.S. economy go, so the schools produce them in quantity. The thought makes my stomach turn. It makes me want to avoid every trace of participation in “school” as the government conceives it.

I have believed all along that I could easily fulfill the government’s goals along with my own. But if the goal of state schooling is to sap passion for learning from my kid’s brains and take away their time for real life, then that is a conflict of interest I can’t ignore.

My 12 year old gets up before everyone else in the family because she likes the quiet morning hours for doing her schoolwork. I require her to do her math work before she logs on to the online textbooks, and she is often done with all of it by 8:30 in the morning when the rest of the house gets up and begins breakfast and chores. She spends the rest of her day doing as she pleases: doing crafts, reading, making butter and cheese, cooking things, reading to her brother, sewing, etc.

My 10 year old is a sleepy head and is often last up. She milks the cow, and mosies through breakfast and is often just starting school at noon. Her math takes her forever, and she zooms through her computer school. She reads plenty. She is reading the Lord of the Rings Trilogy for about the fourth time in two years, and grabs other quicker reads as I bring them from the library. She spends her spare time making clay pots, frolicking with her pet goat, playing songs with her sister on her guitar, and most recently, working with a hide she is tanning.

All that to say, I don’t think the inane curriculum time has caused their brains to leak out of their ears yet. I am afraid if I read the rest of this book, however, I may be utterly unwilling to participate with the system at all. In any case, I think it is time to revisit my goals for these children again.