Luke 9:23 (NIV)
Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
This doesn't seem like that hopeful a prospect, but just prior to this statement, Jesus had asked Peter who Peter thought Jesus was. "The Christ of God," he said. Then Jesus told the disciples what was going to happen to Him in the near future. So he wasn't simply telling the disciples what to do, he was telling them what He was going to do--leading by example.
All the disciples knew what a cross was and what it meant, but I kind of doubt any of them had thought in terms of all this ending up on a cross, until now. If anything, maybe they thought that the worst possible outcome would be to die in some glorious way while coming to Jesus's defense as he made his way toward his rightful throne. Knowing what the cross was--an instrument of execution--it must have given them pause to hear that they were to "take up their cross" not just once, but every day.
What does this mean? Does it mean that we must carry the means by which we kill off our own sin along with us everywhere we go? Does it mean that we need to be ready to die for our faith at any time? Is it what I think is the more common meaning, that whatever our burden in life--ill health, poverty, disappointment in relationships, career, etc.--we must shoulder that burden and carry it along because that's the only way we can follow Jesus? After all, he carried that same burden we carry to the cross with Him, and the burdens of every other human that has ever lived as well.
Why on earth would we want to do this? You know, I think that trying to avoid taking up our cross, whatever that might mean, is in the end rather futile and going to cause us more pain than avoidance. Picking up our cross means facing our problems rather than trying to deny them, it means facing our responsibilities instead of trying to weasel out of them. Really, it's part of being an adult. Trying to pretend you don't have problems and duties just makes everything worse.
But taking up the cross means a lot more than that. After telling us to daily take up our cross, Jesus says: "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?
It doesn't seem like much good to me. As Christians, taking up our cross is integral to our very identities. We can't be who we truly are if we try to avoid the difficult aspects of that. How is this? In His next words, Jesus links the taking up of the cross with our identification with Him. If we refuse our cross, we are showing we are ashamed of Him, and losing our connection with God.
Eight days after he said this came the Transfiguration. First Peter, James, and John heard the bad side of things, then they saw the glory of who Christ truly is with their own eyes. I'm not going to try to draw a specific cause-effect connection, but I do think it's true that if we don't take up our cross first, we will certainly never experience God's help with that cross. If we spend our energy crying about the existence of the cross instead of simply picking it up and moving along with it, we'll never see anything but the cross itself. We'll never see the glory waiting at the end of the road, and all along the way too, for those who have the eyes to see.
It seems rather odd that in Matthew 11:30 Jesus says, "...my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Not to mix metaphors, but how can a yoke that is a cross be easy and light? Jesus even promises "rest" for those who take on His yoke. I think that when we take on our cross, whatever that means: cheerfully shouldering whatever responsibilities God sends us, being willing to give up our sin nature in exchange for something better (our true nature), even being willing to suffer for the God who has suffered so much for us--it's really Jesus who is carrying it. We take on a lot when we take on Jesus, but we know He'll give us more than enough strength for anything that comes from that decision. If we avoid our cross, we end up with nothing at all; if we take up our cross we end up with ourselves and with God, with a meaningful life well-lived, and with all the fruits the Spirit can bless us with.
My previous post was a little on the upbeat side, so here's some good-natured grumpiness to balance it out. But all in all, life in our apt. really isn't that bad.
5. Quarters: A game with two exciting phases (1) Collecting them and (2) Getting the washers and dryers to accept them. Grand Prize: Clean laundry.
4. Name That Tune: Based on only the bass line, as filtered through the drywall. Grand Prize: Being able to hum the melody takes the edge of the psychological wear and tear caused by the relentless pounding sound.
3. Mail Bingo: Whose mail did you receive? Who received your mail? Grand Prize: First player to successfully collect all his or her mail wins...his or her mail.
2. Somebody's At the Door: Use your deductive skills to determine whether it's worthwhile to answer the door buzzer or not, based on time of day, whether you're expecting anyone, what you're trying to get done at the time, etc. Prizes depend upon the visitor: If it is the UPS man, you win valuable prizes for answering the door; but if it's a group of small children trying to sell you random objects and repeatedly asking if you know which apartment "Sabrina" lives in, you are penalized for wasting valuable time.
1. What's That Horrible Stench?: Players judge the source and nature of that smell in the hallway based on source, intensity, duration, and quality. Grand Prize: Nobody wins.
The pregnancy books say that the middle trimester of pregnancy is the best one, when women have gotten over the fatigue and nausea of early pregnancy and aren't yet big enough to be exhausted by carrying the baby around all day. For me, though there have been awesome things about every phase of pregnancy (as well as some irritations, previously documented in this space), the sixth month has so far been the most truly fun so far.
The best thing about being pregnant, of course, is getting to nurture a new life and look forward to the arrival of the new family member. But there are some secondary benefits, which I list below in no particular order.
But before I do, I have to note: when one talks about pregnancy, one necessarily get into much more detailed descriptions of happenings in one's own body than I, for one, would ordinarily be talking about. But that's just the way it is. Some people are put off by this, which is fine. I find that the people who are interested in hearing about other peoples' pregnancies are generally (1) people who have had babies of their own, especially women but to some extent the guys too, (2) people who haven't had babies yet but want to and are interested in the process, (3) people in the medical profession, (4) people who are too polite to tell me to shut up, and finally (5) people who fit none of the above categories but just have a weird and somewhat inappropriate interest in other peoples' bodies. I met one of the latter last weekend. But when you're pregnant, what's going on inside your body is out there for all the world to see and speculate on, so what the hey. I'm just glad he didn't offer to feel my stomach.
1. The baby kicking. I've long heard about babies kicking, but didn't know it's not just kicks that you feel. I also know when she's squirming, shifting position, just randomly moving around, and doing something that I can only describe as dancing. My mother's been asking me if she's gotten hiccups yet, I'm not sure, but I may have experienced that this morning. It's so much fun, it often makes me laugh out loud and wonder what exactly she's doing in there, and of course there's the poking game I described in the last post.
2. Big is beautiful. I've been self conscious about my weight and size for pretty much as long as I can remember. But now all that is more or less out of my control, and I feel better and more confident about my appearance than I ever have before. Normally I catch sight of myself and think some aspect of me is looking fatter than usual, and start trying to hide. Now, I'm unequivocally bigger than usual in several dimensions, but when I see myself, I just think "Hey, I'm supposed to look like this. I'm pregnant." It's a good feeling to feel really confident about the amount of space I take up. Women are "supposed" to be small, slender, and dainty. Often, if they're not, they not only feel bad about themselves but get tangible proof that other people don't approve of their size either.
On the other hand, I have met larger women who are comfortable with their size, it seems to be a part of their self-confidence and sense of authority. They take up the space that they need, the fact that they take up a little more space simply makes them harder to ignore or dismiss, and they couldn't care less if other people don't like it. Right now at least, I need and am entitled to some extra space, and if I bump into stuff or misjudge how narrow a space I can fit through, then that's just fine and other people can deal with it. I actually feel secretly proud when people marvel, as they often do, that I'm "only" six months along. Yes, I am going to get bigger, I'm going to take up even more space than I do now, and I couldn't be happier about it. Baby can have as much room as she needs, and so can I.
3. New facets to our marriage. Babies and small children have to put some kind of strain on any relationship, or at least change the relationship. I don't buy completely into the idea that society is anti-having children (the existence of "Babies R Us" would seem to argue against that idea), but it is true that the negatives to having them are emphasized an awful lot. I regularly read a humor web site which seems, mysteriously, to equate any reference to a woman having a child to that woman's spirit and independent life being mercilessly crushed by society. To me, it seems more like I'm proudly exercising the one ability that only women have and that men never will, which happens to be the one thing necessary to the continuation of humanity.
Having kids is also seen as putting the kibosh on the most desirable aspects of relationships, as idealized in the movies, which you most look forward to when you're waiting to meet the right person, and which bring you closer together during early phases of relationships. Of course, marriage is often seen as ruining relationships in the same way: romance movies and novels are about dating, not about married couples. What this attitude doesn't recognize is that having a child brings out entirely new aspects of your relationship. Movie-style romantic interludes and witty banter are all very well, but having a child with someone brings you closer to them than all the witty banter in the world. Plus, the strain that a child puts on a relationship, coming as it does from a positive source, will test your commitment and your relationship skills. But by being tested, the trust and closeness of a relationship will be validated and as a result the relationship is better than ever. Knowing that you can trust someone to still love you and do their best to take care of you when you are at your least loveable, say when you are subjecting them to a full-blown hormone-induced temper tantrum at midnight for some reason you will not be able to remember the next day is bound to bring you closer to that person--and more willing to be patient with them should they ever return the favor.
Plus, as I mentioned, being pregnant is (some of the time) a lot of fun, and sharing the experience with someone is way more fun even than strolling the beach in the moonlight or whatever the big romantic stereotype is.
Lately, we have discovered an amusing new way of interacting with the baby. We learned from our sources that if you poke at the baby with your fingers while she's kicking, the baby will often kick back. I've found this a fine method for whiling away dull moments (if I could pass on one characteristic of myself to her, it would be my capacity for being easily amused), and naturally, it got me to thinking about Rene Descartes and the subject-object dichotomy.
Rene is famous for having said (or written, or whatever) "I think, therefore I am." He was trying to figure out what, if anything, we could know for sure. He determined that we could at least know that we, ourselves, exist, because if we are thinking about something, there must be something doing the thinking. Everything else we experience might not be real, since the thinking thing that is us can be fooled (the "brain in a vat" or "Matrix"scenario, or we might just be imagining the whole thing. But at least we know that we ourselves exist.
This sets up the subject-object dichotomy--the idea that the subject (the thinker) is entirely separate from and independent from the thing(s) being thought about (the object). But Heidegger and other philosophers have pointed out that one cannot think about anything unless there is something to be thought about. Thought must be directed towards something, proving the existence of an outside world (however deceptive it might be). Further, what we experience affects what we think and how we think about it, so that the subject is not independent of the object.
I think that some of these philosophical concepts can be illustrated by the example of the baby. What does the baby know? Presumably, she doesn't really "know" anything yet, her brain isn't developed enough. If the anti-subject-object dichotomy philosophers are right, and that in order to have a "consciousness" you must have something of which to be conscious; the baby comes pretty close to an entity with the neural equipment which could potentially allow for consciousness, with precious little material for it to work with.
So what is the baby aware of? First of all, she's aware of herself. She's found out that she can move different parts of her body in different directions (according to the testimony of the ultrasound), and presumably she's figuring out how to do this on purpose, and it's not just random electric impulses making her do those crazy dances. Of course, the purpose of all these movements can't be very apparent to her, since she doesn't really need to do anything at all right now (treasure these few months, baby). But she does do them in response to things, so secondly, she is aware of some things outside of herself.
The things outside of herself which first triggered her shimmy-shake responses must seem quite random, and her responses themselves probably didn't, from her perspective, achieve any apparent result. When I'm moving around a lot, she's quiet, when I'm still for long periods of time, she kicks more and more. I guess she's just bored, or it's the desire for comforting movements which is also evidenced in kids that have already been born. But her kicking doesn't make me move around any more--I do still have a dissertation to write, baby, and I have to sleep some time. (Yes, I know, I should get all the sleep I can now; I've been told).
Just within the past couple of weeks, her moving has become a real interaction with the world around her. She kicks, I poke, she kicks again, I poke again. She can't have any concept of what this might mean. She doesn't have the neural connections yet to put two and two together, she hasn't even yet been presented with "two" as a concept.
Before the baby even becomes a "thinker," in the Cartesian sense, she's an organic part of the "objective" world around her. The "object" is shaping the "thinker" before the "thinker" even comes fully into existence. I wonder if it would have had any effect on Descartes' philosophy, or the entire history of Western philosophy since then, if he'd ever been pregnant?
I've been losing real comments to the purges of junk ones again lately, so I have to apologize for the loss of many of your valued comments. It's probably about time to just give up on this blog and start a new one, but maybe there's another solution out there somehow.
In other news, my spell-checkers have been wanting to make some interesting alterations to my documents lately. My Word spell-checker doesn't know the word "toponym" and wanted to replace it with "cowpony." Sure, why not? (My blog doesn't know "toponym" either, but wants to replace it with "eponymous," which is at least a word). My email program does not know the word "okay" and wanted to replace it with "Tokay."
Tokay, whatever.