The Cheesecake-to-Chard Challenge

And now, another installment in our continuing series on the Rienstra family table. Deb's three years of researching the politics of food for her English 101 classes continues to incur collateral damage at home. That is to say, the Rienstra children are suffering from a more and more severe shortage of hot dogs, pop-tarts, and cheez-its. Meanwhile, they are opening the fridge to find it stuffed with things like kohlrabi and organically raised eggs.

So today we will address directly the commonly perceived relationship between the yumminess and health benefits of food. Everybody knows that the better something tastes, the worse it is for you. Scientifically speaking, as yumminess increases, mortal danger also increases. Likewise, as nutritional benefits increase, alas, so does yuckiness.

This is the perception. But is this really the case? A close examination of the following chart reveals a couple of outliers:


Blueberries, for example, rank high on the yummy scale and have also recently been proven to cure major diseases and promote the development of superpowers. On the other end of the scale, lots of fast food products are both disgusting and fatal.

It is possible, of course, to strike a strategic balance. Note, for example, the dish at the precise center of the chart. The classic American tuna casserole with broccoli has been shown in scientific studies at major research universities to balance taste and health in perfect equilibrium. The tasty cheesy sauce, though a little fatty, can be counter-balanced by whole-wheat pasta; the health benefits of the omega-3 oils in the tuna and the roughage in the broccoli can be yummied up with crumbled potato chips or fried onions layered on top of the dish.

Nevertheless, perhaps we need to change our misconception about yumminess and health. In an effort to do that at our house (and also to promote the development of the local foodshed, know our farmer, and build community with crunchy granola types), we have purchased a share in a CSA farm. That means we paid in February for a share of a local farm's harvest from June through October. So now, every week, we bring home several grocery bags (the re-usable kind, of course) full of green stuff like this:



We're trying to eat, in other words, as much as possible in the upper left quadrant of our chart. And perhaps to coax some things in the lower left quadrant into inching upwards. It turns out, for example, that Swiss chard, if prepared correctly, falls higher on the yumminess scale than we thought.


So Rienstra children, take heart. You may dip your kohlrabi in some standard American super-processed, corn-byproduct-infested, overpackaged ranch dressing. At least, for now...

Come to me, all you weary...

In keeping with the theme of interesting chair photos, there is this, from the goofy god-stuff gallery at Ship-of-Fools:

Summer Fun at General Synod. Seriously.

The summer began this year with about three weeks of what I thought was great fun at the RCA's meeting of General Synod in Holland, June 5-10.

"Fun" isn't a word that many would use to characterize these large meetings where the denomination does its business. (Those of you who have been to such meetings can leave your favorite adjectival descriptors in the comments.) But by God's grace, I wasn't reading sub-committee reports and analyzing debate on contentious topics -- I was preparing for, and then leading, daily worship every day. Hooray!

The opening and closing services, held in the gothic Dimnent Chapel at Hope College, were rather substantial affairs: a congregation full of elders, ministers, and guests; a whole phalanx of pastors to read and lead, to preach and pray and preside at the table; a group of outstanding dancers to physicalize scripture or key liturigcal moments; an organist and choir, brass and string quartets, my old pals Bob Keeley on guitar and Rachel Klompmaker on piano, and my super-friend partner in all this, Greg Scheer ("Worship-twin powers activate! Shape of... an ice-harp! Form of... a gorilla!")

A number of my WTS worship students were there, and noticed that the services reflected an emphasis we'd discussed in class: to worship as voluminously as possibe -- to shape our celebrations so that they were diverse in expressive styles, engaging people on many levels, speaking as fully as possible (in words and more) of the extravagant covenant love of our faithful God. They also noticed that we were intentionally faithful to the RCA's liturgy. While I might offer some suggestions for improving it, it is ecumenical and reformed, rich and beautiful, and therefore - not surprisingly - impossible to do voluminously in anything less than 90 minutes: and on those days in early June, 90 really hot and humid minutes.

Yet the services were deeply satisfying, praise God, and my deepest fear -- moments of logistical terror ("The service starts in one minute -- Oh no! Where's the bread and the wine?") -- were minimal. Those we had were ably managed by an old friend and former student Tim TenClay who stepped in like the Christ-like servant-hearted pastor he is, and took those burdens from my shoulders.

Because these 'festival' services were such hefty and hearty affairs, and because during the day the delegates spent hours and hours and hours talking about God-stuff, it seemed good to Greg and to me to plan the every-day morning and evening prayer services to be just as deeply participative, but a bit less wordy, a bit more stripped-down liturgically and musically.

It helped that we met in a beautiful worship space: a slice of the DeVos center (a large sports venue where the delegates did their work each day) that had been curtained off and shaped for our purposes. The morning services followed a simple daily prayer pattern rather than the more typical word-and-sacrament-without-the-sacrament service ordo. My favorite new worship-wonk friend, Rosanne Barton-DeVries, helped us to worship with our whole bodies and not just our heads, Bob Keeley again helped out on guitar and djembe, and my newest best keyboard-playing friend, Jeremy Simpson, helped to lead the music, with selections largely taken from Sing! A New Creation, a copy of which every delegate took home.

The evening prayers were even more stripped down: one well-chosen song, with each sung verse prompting spoken and silent prayers for ourselves and the world. So, for example, one evening I used a JT-infused guitar riff to accompany our singing of the classic gospel song, "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" -- grounding our petitions in God's providential care. For example, when we sang about the "little bitty baby," we then prayed for our families. When we sang about the "wind and the rain," we spent some time praising God for care of creation, etc.

But the key to what we did that evening was this: instead of singing about God, we tweaked the lyrics so that we sang the song addressed to God: "You've got the whole world in your hands." Changing just that one pronoun alters the way one experiences the song, shifting it from testimony to prayer, and prayer that even while earnest or even desperate, has an undertone of confidence in God's power and love. (Bonus result: excising the overt and exclusively masculine language for God.) Interested worship wonks can learn more about this prayer/song on the related post over at WorshipHelps.

All told, preparing and leading worship this past month was delightful and exhausting and invigorating -- and because it was all resting in God's hands, it was fun.

An Instructive Comparison...

Go West -- A discotheque semi-hit by the Village People (and another semi-hit when covered by the Pet Shop Boys in 1993).

Give Thanks -- a worship mega-hit by Henry Smith. Covered a gujillion times by every praise band on the planet.

Timing? BOTH songs were written in 1978, and released in 1979.

Coincidence? You be the judge.

(Of course, it's not like this particular chord pattern is unique.)

Disclaimer: Listen at your own risk. The authors of this blog are not responsible for the onset of worship-impairment syndrome brought on by viewing these clips.

That Sermon Needs a Bigger But

So yesterday we're all at the dinner table, talking about the morning's church service. The conversation turned to the sermon, titled "Unjust suffering," and offered by our fabulous pastor, Jack Roeda (happy 25 years, Jack!). The text was 1 Peter 2:13-25, a passage addressed to slaves about appropriate submission. Next week he's tackling the next pericope: submission of wives and women. Gee, good luck with that one, Jack.

We all agreed that Jack did a great job explaining what the passage says and proposing how it might apply to our lives. Yet we also agreed -- especially given the history of a troubling text like this one and others like it -- that sometimes it's important to articulate what the passage doesn't say. It means this, BUT not that. Deb was the one who encapsulated our thoughts so memorably: "I guess the sermon needed a bigger but." I'm going to be using that one in my preaching classes this year, I'm pretty sure.

And it's not a bad way of talking about those occasions in sermons or political speeches or, heck, English 101 papers when the possible objections are so near the surface that they need to be addressed. Deb says that from now on, instead of telling her students "You should add a section in which you refute possible objections," she's going to write, "This paper needs a bigger but."

Chew or No Chew

Welcome to another episode of "Chew or No Chew," the entertaining new game show for young puppies! That's right, it's the game in which young puppies wander around the house grabbing random objects and trying to figure out whether the objects go in the "chew" or "no chew" category. Fun for the whole family!

Here at the Rienstra house, we seem to be living a perpetual episode of "Chew or No Chew," with a certain fuzzy yellow contestant.

So, Maizey, in which category would you place these objects?


Obviously, Maizey is still in the learning stage when it comes to chewing. Her way of thinking could be represented by the following Venn diagram where P = playing and B = biting.


We, on the other hand, would like her to see the world more like this.


She is catching on, slowly. Meanwhile, we are getting very very good about keeping our shoes and socks put away. Oh, we're also learning to keep the door to the bathroom closed.

Resilience (or Ruth's Revenge)

So first thing after they moved in
the neighbors dug up Ruth’s old garden,
a front-yard oddity that had appeared —
shaggy, extravagant, sprawling — wherever
her springtime sweat cast its charms.

The new people pulled out
her spindly jungle of asparagus; tore up
the nasturtium border whose sensuous petals,
like mangoes, you could pluck and eat;
they hacked down six-foot sunflowers;

mowed over silky native grasses that flowed
on breezy days like a woman’s hair.
The little paw-paw tree they decided to keep.
They mowed around it.

Grinning and waving at us as we strolled by,
they spent a hot September weekend
digging and seeding, laying straw,
staking off squares of flat, potential decency.

The straw muddied, winds came,
snow fell then melted, the weather warmed,
and Ruth’s earth took its revenge:

A hundred tulips shot up
in the feeble spring lawn,
raising first their cocked leaves,
then their green, defiant heads.



(c) 2008 Debra Rienstra

The Pitter-Patter of Little Paws

It's been a whole week now and we're still giddy with the excitement of adding a new member to the Rienstra family: an adorable little canine fuzz-ball. Yep, last Monday we adopted a puppy.

She is a yellow Lab on the mom's side, and on the dad's side... well, let's just say there's a suspicion a Retriever was involved, but as sometimes happens with these situations, no one's entirely sure. Whatever stock she's from, she's loaded up with the "cute" gene.

Though I was initially lobbying for some clever/geeky professor-type name (Ophelia or Egeria or something like that), wiser family members insisted on something plainer. After much palavering, we settled on Maizey, not after the illustrated mouse, but as a nod to our alma mater.

So far she's super sweet and gentle, at least most of the time. She does have what we call her "crazy Maizey" moments, especially late at night, when she bounces around, chewing anything small, clamping onto loose socks and thrashing them into submission. But as a typical puppy, she also has her "lazy Maizey" times when she curls up in her crate -- or in someone's lap -- and nods off after a loving look and a little lick on the cheek.

We don't have much animal experience, but we've puppy-proofed the house, are reading lots of relevant books, and projecting our best calm-assertive energy.

Welcome to the pack, Maizey!

A Little Dating Advice

Mia turns 15 this week. That means driver's training, obsessive Facebooking, ipod-assisted parent ignoring, and (*gulp*) boys. Fortunately, the giddy terrors of dating remain, for Mia, largely unexplored as of yet. This is giving us time to slap together some parental wisdom on this perennially puzzling topic, filled as it is with risks, with unknowns, with new life and new civilizations.

Not being experts on dating ourselves*, we figure we need to consult the source of our most valuable life-wisdom: Star Trek. (Sample: never beam down to the planet while wearing a red shirt!)

Wesley Crusher, for instance, the ST character in the tender teenage demographic, has a couple of alarming encounters with "young women" who are not what they seem to be. In fact, many a promising space romance has been cut brutally short by some groaner of a revelation. Picard, Riker, Kirk, Bev Crusher, Troi, Jake Sisco--just about every starfleet character with a smidge of libido has discovered that love can bring, shall we say, unexpected challenges.

As with so many things in life, a lot of these complications could be avoided with some careful screening beforehand. So here we present the "Wesley Crusher Pre-Date Quiz." All Rienstra children will be required to administer this quiz to all interested parties before anybody backs out the driveway.

• Are you now or have you ever been a being of pure energy?
  
  
• Are you a psychic projection, a transporter reflection, or a sophisticated hologram?

• Are you a shape-shifter? (this does not necessary disqualify you)
  
  
• Are you ferociously guarded by a shape shifter? (this does disqualify you)
  

• If we innocently kiss, will I be impregnated by your alien spawn?
  

• Do you reproduce in some unexpected way that you really should inform me of right now?

• Are you a symbiont being, and if so, do both your parts agree in their affection for me?

• Do you only like me because I'm the first thing you saw when you emerged from your maturity pod? (this doesn't necessarily disqualify you, either).

• Do you, in fact, exist at this point in the space-time continuum?

Of course, in addition to this filtering system, all would-be suitors will also be required to cite, from memory, the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism. Let's see Wesley's space girlfriends do that.

*By the way, not being dating experts and being Star Trek experts -- total coincidence!

Ream o' Fun

Yes, there have been some cobwebs accumulating on this blog, and now it's time to explain the neglect and brush the cobwebs aside (thanks for the metaphor, Mary).

After about three years of labor (sure, let's have another metaphor) we have at last managed to give birth to the manuscript of a book. It may or may not end up being called Worship Words: Attending to the Power of Language in Songs, Prayers, Sermons, and All of Worship. The good people at Baker will make the final decision on title. But it is a book about language in worship, and it has indeed been a collaborative effort.

Now that we've finished it (and quick--before it comes back to us for formatting decisions, proofreading, permissions fuss, etc.), it feels good to move on with life and maybe get back to all the other things that we have been neglecting. Such as blogging, raising the children, and even brushing the very real cobwebs out of the corners of our scruffy house.

Answer to Prayer

Back in 2002, Deb and I took a long hike in Colorado and discussed a crazy notion that was just beginning to dawn on me. Prompted by some friends, I was wondering about getting a Ph.D. I thought that train had left the station years back, and at my age and stage - well, it was too crazy. Well, maybe it wasn't so crazy. Was it crazy?

In the months that followed, we found we could not ignore the nudgings. They seemed kind of, well, divine. So we committed to everything it would mean to travel this road, including a two-year sojourn in California and other related adventures.

But all along, there have been many moments of wondering "Am I SURE this is the right thing??" These moments did tend to occur just before major papers were due or major bills needed to be paid. Always (eventually) I would return to the need to trust that this was right, that I hadn't mis-read the signs, and that it would make sense in the end. And often enough there was a remarkably well-timed affirmation that would make me feel dopey for having had those doubts in the first place.

Which brings us to today. Since moving back to Grand Rapids, I've been doing a bit of adjunct teaching here and there, writing and preaching, doing research, planning and leading worship. Oh and of course, there's that one big paper I still have to write. And while all this keeps me from robbing liquor stores to pay the bills or squandering my freetime on too much frivolity, it hardly seems like God would send us down this Ph.D. road so I could end up patching a professional life together from such bits and pieces.

Today, however, I feel as if things are starting to make sense. I am glad and grateful to announce something that I never imagined or guessed when we started on this journey: I have been appointed Assistant Professor of Preaching and Worship at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan.

I've taught several classes there already and it feels right to be at an RCA school, among my peeps, my tribe. I'm thrilled and honored that they're entrusting the covenant youth bound for their pulpits to my care.

But now I'm beginning to wonder if they're thinking: is this crazy? not too crazy, maybe a little bit crazy?

Mathlete

Warning: Indulgent brag-post ahead!

Everyone knows that athletes get all the glory. Even on this blog, we spend a disproportional number of column inches on the family's soccer exploits. Fortunately, those who love other fields of endeavor have their ways of shining, too.

Jacob, for instance, has become quite the Mathlete. Now, I don't entirely understand the allure of this extra-curricular activity. For me, doing math problems under time constraints in competition with others sounds like a hot little corner of hell. But Jacob loves it. And the good teachers at his school happily give extra time and energy to help their students excel.

So last Friday while Deb and I were driving to Chicago, Jacob was doing slide-rule calisthenics in the city-wide "Math Counts" competition. And of all the kids from the 23 competing schools, Jake snagged a 5th place individual score and an invitation to the state competition next week. We were pretty proud when the "Home Bulletin" from GRCMS arrived yesterday and we saw the write up on Jacob's achievement. Especially since last week's Home Bulletin also included a top-left write-up on another area of Jacob's scholastic achievement.

So here's to the normally unsung exploits of math and English lovers, the decathaletes of the calculator and the word processor.