Halloween: A Christian Holiday?

My hubby has posted an interesting blog entry about Halloween. Forget the "Harvest Festival" or dressing up like biblical characters - maybe we should return to the holiday's original focus. Time we take back Halloween in all its goulish mockery!

Baby Love

"When I see six black kids playing, I know four are missing. This is truly a genocide."

Think Pastor Gaines was talking about tribal warfare in the Sudan or another African country? Think again - he wasn't! He was speaking at the 2006 Love Walk about the African-American community where four out of ten pregnancies end in abortion. Read that again. Four out of ten pregnancies in the African-American community ends in abortion. There is a genocide going on in our country and our courts have said it is a legal one.

That's why my husband and I and many other concerned Christians braved the cold wind last Saturday morning to walk two miles. The Love Walk is one of the major fundraisers for the AA Pregnancy Help Center. It is also a wonderful way to raise community awareness about the center.

Our lives seem to become more hectic and over scheduled with each passing year. The technological advances that were supposed to save us time instead have just enabled more demands to be placed on our time. But how overworked we are shouldn't matter one bit when it comes to being involved in the fight against abortion.

Irish philosopher Edmund Burke said, "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." All it takes for more babies to be murdered every year is for Christians to sit around the kitchen table and lament the murderous practice, but do nothing. All it takes for more women to bear the scars of a horrific decision is for Christian voters to compromise on life issues. All it takes for our country to continue under God's wrath as the blood of innocents cry out for vengeance is for you and I to do nothing.

May I Quote You on That?

One of my all-time favorite quotes is by George Eliot (pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans): "Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words."

At least I thought the quote was Eliot's. Seems a very similar quote is attributed to Dinah Maria Mulock Craik. Ms. Craik and Ms. Eliot lived in roughly the same time period, so the mystery continues as to who wrote what first. However, Ms. Craik's is a larger version and, after all these years, I think I've come to like the lines attributed to her even better than what I had thought was the original. Her quote is:

Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and then with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.

Doesn't that perfectly describe your close friends? You don't have the "uh oh. How will they take that?" moments because you can trust they know your heart. You are able to talk to each other freely without cumbersome clarifiers and disclaimers. I earnestly strive to be that kind of friend. I know I am blessed with that kind of relationship with my hubby and a few girlfriends who are that kind of friend.

Reminds me a lot of a biblical mandate: Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Movie Talk: The Lake House

[Warning: Mild Spoilers!]

My hubby and I just finished watching The Lake House featuring the reteaming of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. I've always thought of Keanu Reeves in action/thriller roles, but I loved him in this movie. Sandra Bullock is raw and vulnerable in this movie (a litttle reminiscent of her character in Hope Floats).

One of the reviews on the DVD cover says it's "A rare and unique love story". Okay, maybe not so unique (I'm old enough to remember Christopher Reeves in Somewhere In Time), but a love story this definitely is.

Dr. Kate Forster (Bullock) and Alex Wyler (Reeves) live in the same house, but two years apart; him in 2004 and her in 2006. Through a time-bending mailbox, the two strike up a relationship via letters. This is the romance of the movie for me - falling in love on paper.

There's something about composition meant to be read rather than heard. Face to face, we are restrained by our inhibition, attempts to read the other person's face, inability to find the right words at the right time, perhaps fear of response, etc. But when writing, it's just you, the pen and the paper (or in this case - me, the keyboard and computer screen) without time constraints. It's a form of communication that can generate intimacy between strangers much sooner than spoken words. That's one of the reasons this movie resonated with me. I fully accepted the premise of falling in love by letters, by the sharing of thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears and the like.

Another reason I loved this movie is as Alex's feelings for Kate grow, he is prompted to do things - like leave a message on a building in 2004 that she will see in 2006. I love the depiction of a man doing loving acts , of old-fashioned wooing.

There's an element of fate in this movie. A "meant-to-be" that all romantics hold dear. Rent The Lake House. It's a grown-up's fairytale.