bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Review part 2 of Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: Virtue and restraint.

    (Part 1 here)

    So there's a couple of turns of phrase in Ellyn Satter's Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family that sets off red lights and sirens for the likes of me.

    The first one is "Shun Virtue."  Yes, you heard that right:  shun virtue.  It even appears in the index:  "Virtue, shunning, 20."

    The second one is "Restraint is profoundly unrealistic."  "The research is clear that restrained eating profoundly disrupts eating attitudes and behaviors" (okay, that's circular) "as well as destabilizes body weight."

    Let me first give you an idea of the grain of salt you need to tuck into your cheek here.  Note that she does not say that the research is clear that restrained eating causes, or even is associated with bad outcomes — only that it's associated with weight instability, which in turn is associated with bad outcomes.  And although the heading "Restrained Eating" in the appendix (pp. 240-241) is followed by a column and a half of text with citations, only a couple of these are actually about so-called "restrained eaters."  Just one of those looks well-supported to me, and I'll write more about that one further down.

    But more to the point, how can we take anyone seriously who says "shun virtue" and "restraint is unrealistic?"  I'm automatically suspicious of the "restraint is unrealistic" line, because in my experience it's often the backbone of an entire philosophy of existence, life, and education — a philosophy which I utterly reject.   It comes too often with advice to "do what feels good", justified by the assertion that self-control is inherently damaging, and that our pent-up frustration will find an outlet in psychological problems or some kind of binge.  We Catholics are certainly familiar with analogous philosophies in sexual matters, no?
     
    I'm not saying that Satter espouses a "do what feels good" philosophy, or even that she's incorrect in suggesting that "restrained eaters" really do tend to binge as a reaction to their restraint (more on that later — I think the evidence is that some of them do).  I'm just saying that the twin phrases "shun virtue" and "restraint is unrealistic" make me instantly skeptical.

    But maybe the problem is one of defining one's terms.  Obviously Satter's not setting out to write a book about virtue and vice.  She's not, then, using the term "virtue" and "restraint" in the same way that we are — they aren't theological jargon, but some jargon of her own.  So what does she mean?

    A quote:

    When I helped Wesley learn to feed himself in a more positive and nurturing way, I encouraged him to have regular meals.  This brought us right up against his well-developed pattern of freaking himself out with the food rules, and together we apprehended him again and again when he went chasing off after the food rules and neglected to provide himself with foods he enjoyed.  When his eating became chaotic, we traced it to his out-of-control virtue.  You understand the dilemma of the overdeveloped conscience if you order broiled fish when you really want it fried, and then give in to cheesecake when the dessert tray comes around.  If you truly enjoy broiled fish, you will have to come up with some other example of out-of-control virtue, but the point stands:  If you can't give yourself permission to eat the foods you enjoy, you will have to rely on impulse to get them.

    She's using the word "virtue" to mean something it never means in ordinary usage:  something bad.  Can real virtue get "out of control" and become bad?  I think not, although we can misunderstand what behaviors are required for the practice of virtue (and become prudish when we intended to be modest, for example).  So — this is an error on her part, and it sounds to me like she's unfamiliar with the language of virtue — or else she would choose a different word.   (Note too the reference to an "overdeveloped conscience."  No such thing.  You can have a perverted conscience, though, which is what she really means:  a conscience that tells you good things are bad.)

    What Satter means for the reader to shun is food scrupulosity:  excessive rule-following coupled to self-judging with respect to the rules.  She calls this "virtue." I hope it does not reflect upon her opinions about people who really do try to be virtuous in the correct sense!

    That takes care of "virtue."  Now, how about "restraint?"  What does she mean by a "restrained eater" or an "unrestrained eater?"

    Helpfully, she includes a side box with a definition of "restrained eating."

    As originally defined, restrained eating is trying to get yourself to eat less food or less-desirable food than you really want in pursuit of thinness [or health]."

    • Imposing absolute limits:  so many calories, so many helpings.  Going by portion sizes or a food pattern. 
    • Making yourself hurdle:  "I have to eat this before I can eat that."
    • Avoiding certain foods…
    • Limiting your menus to drab, uninspiring foods
    • Trying to fill up on low-fat, low-calorie, "healthy" food
    • Trying to eat only low-carb…
    • Substituting low-calorie butter, margarine, or salad dressing for the real thing in order to save calories.
    • Asking yourself "Do I really need that?"

    This is what she means whenever she talks about "restraint."  She clearly doesn't mean all kinds of self-control, because (while she recommends "self-trusting" eating) she does make recommendations that require self-control or self-discipline, and even an imposed outside structure.  For example:

    •  She advocates eating as part of regular meals and snacks — not grazing.
    • She offers techniques for learning to like new foods through controlled exposure.  (Some of us find it hard to believe you might need self-discipline to get yourself to eat more of something, but indeed you do.)
    • She advocates "tuning in" and "staying in touch with your feelings of hunger and eagerness to eat" while eating — mindful eating.  She even advises, "That takes effort."  In other words, she advocates slowing down and paying attention.  
    • She even gives an excruciatingly detailed technique for learning to notice hunger and satiety signals, right down to how long to chew a mouthful of food.  If that isn't controlled, I don't know what is!

     
    It's pretty clear that she thinks *her* messages are all about trust and not control or restraint, but I'm not buying that the distinction is all that clear.  (Similarly, she writes lots of stuff about how children need to be free to take as much or as little of a food as they want — but when you get right down to it, even she says that children should only be given one helping of bread lest they fill up on it!  And she even advocates making "rules" — her word, not mine — about Halloween candy.  Gasp!  Rules!)

    So.  What does her "unrestrained eating" have to do with gluttony?  When she says "get rid of restraint," is she inviting us to be gluttons?

    What's usually cited as Aquinas's "definition" of gluttony is really more of a classification of gluttonies (too much, too soon, too eagerly, too pickily, too expensively).  I made a stab at defining gluttony here:  gluttony abhors the restraints on food that are necessary according to our state in life.  Restraints are placed on us by a number of different requirements:  charity, obedience, resources, physical health, religious or ethical duties, and manners, among other things.  If you can't stand to make your food intake conform to these requirements, you might be a glutton.

    It's really clear from reading Satter that with her term "restrained eating" she doesn't mean to condemn any of the restraints I mention above — except those we perceive we need for physical health and especially thinness.  For example, she strongly emphasizes table manners, and demonstrates sensitivity to food budgets or cultural differences in food traditions.  

    As far as I can tell, though, she completely ignores a distinction between our real physical constraints and our perceived ones, and condemns as dangerous "restrained eating" any self-control in pursuit of help.  

    Can she really mean this?  I assume, for instance, that she wouldn't advocate ignoring the restraints placed upon people by allergies, autoimmune diseases, or endocrine diseases like diabetes — even though these involve eating "less" or "less-desirable" food "than you really want" in the pursuit of "health."   A diabetic simply cannot eat as much as he or she wants of whatever he or she wants.  And conditions like diabetes really do exist on a spectrum from healthy to pre-metabolic syndrome to metabolic syndrome to pre-diabetes to full-blown diabetes, itself on a continuum of severity.  So somewhere along the line, a person has to be aware that food choices affect health, and a little bit of "restraint" won't kill you.  But by ignoring the constraints placed on people by real physical disorders, she loses the opportunity to clarify when restraint is appropriate.

    So I mentioned above that there was one thing about the dangers of restraint that made sense to me.  Here's the one thing she writes that looks plausible to me based on the citations, and that I'm willing to believe on her authority, given that she works with people who suffer from eating disorders:

    Rather than overeating per se in response to stressors, restrained eaters suspend restraint:  They stop undereating.  Then, because restraint has been violated, rather than simply eating enough to satisfy hunger, they go on to overeat.

    That sounds really familiar.  The term she uses for this pattern is "restraint and disinhibition."  And I think what it comes down to is this:  Following rules won't cure gluttony all by itself.  The tendency is still there.

    And she may be right about this.  On the other hand, the problem may also be that the rules are poorly designed.  I tend to think that she doesn't really think all rules are bad; she just won't call the good rules "rules."  More on this another time.

    —

    |

    2 comments on Review part 2 of Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: Virtue and restraint.

  • This.

    xkcd this morning.

    Beauty

    I think it explains why I love my husband.  

    Not that he reminds me of a slime mold or anything.

    —

    |

    1 comment on This.

  • Ramen hacks.

    If your kids like plain ramen, and you don't, maybe you could use these ramen hacks to jazz up your portion and avoid making two lunches.

    I think I might try one of these next time I am serving lunch to 11 kids and three moms.  For the moms.

    Who doesn't like noodles with some greens, poached egg, and sriracha sauce?  But hey, that's so traditional it's almost boring.  On the other hand — Doesn't the ramen-topped shepherd's pie (near the bottom) look twelve kinds of awesome?  Come on.  Admit it.  

    —

    |

    2 comments on Ramen hacks.

  • Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family” review part 1: What I learned from reading the appendices first.

    So I finally gave up on reading Ellyn Satter's Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family forwards, and started reading it backwards instead, starting with the appendix.  I'm not sure why, but I found that easier — maybe I just wanted the details first.  Also, I was kind of curious what kind of publications the author cited.  

    It seems that many of her publications appear in The Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, which is not a periodical I am familiar with.  This is the journal of the Society for Nutrition Education, an educational and advocacy organization.  So, more of an education journal than a nutrition-science journal.   Skimming through the abstracts, I see a lot of papers that are trying to answer the questions:  How do the messages that people hear influence the food choices they make?   How do people learn about nutrition?  What really helps people make positive changes?

    All these are good questions to ask, especially if you are a parent, an educator, or a blogger who likes to write motivational posts about healthy, temperate eating.  It's worth noting that this is not the same question as "what food choices should I make to be physically healthier" or "how do I lose weight."

     I get the impression that Satter's area of expertise is in "how to teach children to eat well," "how to understand eating," "how to make positive choices," "how to navigate the confusing mix of food messages that we're all immersed in"  or "how to correct certain eating disorders."  Her focus isn't in biochemistry or in nutrition science:  "what kind of fat is best for you" or "how many calories should a person eat." 

    But you wind up with a little bit of overlap, because Satter does have definite ideas about what kinds of positive change are most important, and that winds up getting presented as "make this kind of change first, save that other kind of change for later."  Which sounds a little bit like "this is what you should eat."  But it's not, actually, that kind of advice.  

    So I guess I learned something useful from starting with the appendices after all.  This book is, among other things, about setting priorities for change to more positive eating.   And when it comes to priorities, Satter places nutritional content of the food considerably lower than the emotional context of the food.   So, for example, it's much more important to her that families eat regular meals together than, say, what those meals are made of.

    + +  +

    Mark has a fair amount of exposure to food, nutrition, and food-marketing research, and is skeptical about sweeping claims drawn from studies that demonstrate correlation but not causation.  So, for example, take Appendix B, "What the Research Says about Meals."  Satter presents a whole string of data, citing twenty different sources, that shows strong associations between regular family meals and good outcomes in children and adolescents.  And then she concludes the appendix with this:  

    The evidence is compelling… the day-to-day routine of structured, sit-down family meals and snacks reassures children that they are loved and that they will be provided for — nutritionally and in all other ways.

    Well, no.  The evidence actually is that children who have regular family meals tend to be healthier and do better and school and things than children who don't — possibly because regular family meals are a marker for success, not a cause of it.  "When you start advising people to make a change, you'd better be sure that it's causation and not just correlation," warns Mark.  Now, I tend to think about many interventions-correlated-with-good-stuff, "Why not try it and see if it works?" but then, I'm biased towards thinking that something like family meals are a good end in themselves.  

    Mark has a point:  If you start telling people that they should eat regular family meals together, you're telling a big chunk of the population, "You don't parent your children right… the way you do it is wrong… you might be to blame if your children have problems later."  These messages aren't without consequence, especially for the people who don't go on to make the recommended changes because of hardship or conflicting desires or whatever.  And if in fact family meals don't cause good outcomes, well, then your advice didn't actually help anyone.

    So, there's a bit of a grain of salt to take the advice with:  correlation, not necessarily causation.  On the other hand, many of Satter's readers may desire things like regular family meals for their own sake, whether or not it makes the children better-behaved, smarter, or fitter.  And there's some advice in here about how to do it, even if you don't know how.  Believing that making some of these changes might help your family's physical and emotional health could provide some useful motivation.   

    Another sweeping statement shows up in Appendix D, "BMI Mortality, Morbidity, and Health:  Resolving the Weight Dilemma."  After presenting some data that demonstrates what we already know (it's hard to lose weight) and what many people don't know (overweight isn't as strongly associated with bad health as a lot of people think it is), she goes on to advise:

    [Weight loss] can't be achieved anyway… instead of trying for weight loss, focus on improving your health behaviors.  Establish goals that can be achieved:  

    • Develop and maintain eating competence.
    • Develop sustainable patterns of activity.
    • Learn to feel good about yourself, just as you are.

    She clearly believes that weight loss can't be achieved.  I'm all for developing eating competence, for learning to fit exercise into your life, and for getting rid of unhelpful negative thought patterns, but I don't like the "it's hopeless" attitude toward permanent weight loss.    

    But in one sense she's correct that weight loss can't be achieved directly.   A weight loss "goal" isn't a real "goal" because it's not something you can decide to reach.  You can't exactly choose to lose weight.  What you can choose to do is change your behavior, and that might help with the weight loss you hope for, or it might not.  Desiring behavior change for its own sake is something I've written a lot about.   A behavior goal — unlike a weight-loss goal — is something that can be achieved merely by choice.  And such behavior goals include eating well and getting exercise.

    ("Learn to feel good about yourself just as you are," though… I'm having trouble finding any evidence that this is associated with better outcomes.  This sounds like touchy-feelyism to me.  And why should I work hard to develop eating competence or sustainable activity — why should I try to improve anything at all about myself — if I "feel good about myself just as I am?"  No, better to remain always aware of our shortcomings and always ready to work on them.  But this is obviously a philosophical difference, not a difference in expertise, between her and me.  I think it's an error to claim that science supports this kind of "should" philosophy — either hers or mine.)

    Because it's late, I'm going to stop here, even though there's more to be said about the appendices.  I'm particularly interested in what she has to say about "restrained eating," something she says is associated with bad outcomes.  A fair question:  Is "restrained eating" as Satter defines it the same as eating temperately?  Is "unrestrained eating" as Satter defines it the same as eating gluttonously?  Or is the unrestrained-restrained axis orthogonal to the temperance-gluttony axis?  Tune in later and I'll think out loud some more.

    —

    |

    1 comment on Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family” review part 1: What I learned from reading the appendices first.

  • Ah, Lent. And upcoming thoughts.

    All my blog readers disappear, and so do I, a little bit.

    No, I didn't give up blogging for Lent, though I did prune back my RSS reader quite a bit.  I do have a few things percolating around that I'll be writing about soon.

    For instance, some weeks ago commenter and blogger Jamie asked me if I wouldn't pretty please read a particular book by Ellyn Satter, Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family, and then offer my opinion.  I am here to report that it is a very interesting book, that I am not done with it yet, that I struggled with it for a few days before finally settling on reading it backwards (starting with the appendices), and that so far I have several opinions.  

    One:  it's not a very easy book to digest, something about the density of informati0n, but I will do my best to distill it for you when I write my real review (or, more likely, reviews, since the book's three parts could have been three separate books, but aren't — for one very good reason).

    The three parts, by the way, break down like this:  (1) how to feed yourself, (2) how to feed children ("get children to eat"), and (3) how to cook.

    Two:  there are some extremely useful organizational principles — I mean mentally organizational principles, not ways to make things easy to find in your freezer.  Good ways to think about, for instance, how to rank the competing values that are often in play when we decide what to eat, or exactly what it is we're teaching children when we set out to feed them.

    Three:  I am not really the intended audience for two-thirds of this book, but some of the extremely useful organizational principles are found in the parts of the book that I would think I wouldn't need to read.   What I'm getting at:   The "how to eat" and "how to cook" parts are very, very, very basic.   But it's in there that some of the useful principles are to be found.

    Four:   I think this is one of those books that has a gem or two for everybody, and should probably become the How To Feed Yourself bible for a small subset of the population.  There are also a lot of recommendations that make the most sense for people who have a certain set of food-related skills and/or issues, but would not really be relevant to people who possess a different  set of food-related skills and/or issues.

    Five:  The author definitely comes from the "you can't lose weight by dieting, so you might as well try to be healthy at your size" school of food writing.  My readers know I don't agree with this sentiment as a one-size-fits-all, permanent assertion, but considering her audience and the purpose of her book, I think she is not off base in making this recommendation.   

    Is that cryptic enough for you?  I will write more later.  For now, consider that your appetizer.

    —

    |

    2 comments on Ah, Lent. And upcoming thoughts.

  • Lent, Monday one.

    Last Friday, the kids and I met Mark at church for the fish fry dinner, then he took the three younger ones off to run errands while the 10-y-o and I stuck around to attend Stations of the Cross followed by Eucharistic Benediction.  I pointed out that the booklet (it's the Liguori stations) contained the Stabat Mater in Latin as well as in parallel English translation, and out of the corner of my eye watched him happily flipping back and forth trying to make out the Latin as best he could.  It's exactly the sort of thing I would have been doing as a ten-year-old, and I had  to hide my smile.

    My mind wanders terribly during these things, but a phrase from one of the Stations jumped out at me — so to speak — and I decided right there to take it as my Lenten theme.  It's the ninth Station, "Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem:"

    "…do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children."

    I'm not sure exactly where that will take me, yet, but I think it will take me far in forty days.

    * * *

    My plans are modest.  I'm hoping to make it to an hour of adoration twice a week during Lent — just me — using about two-thirds of what's usually my school-planning time.  And I set some limits for myself on the computer, eliminating some of the extra time and also taking some of the stuff I usually read out of my RSS reader, with an eye towards serenity.  Above that, I'm going to try tentatively giving up some items of food, but on a day-by-day basis.   I swore off giving up food-type things for Lent a couple of years ago, because I felt it exacerbated my eating disorders, but I'm feeling stronger about those now and so I think I'm ready to give it a try again, but carefully.  I also have some spiritual reading lined up.

    So, not one big thing-to-do-every-day, but several small things that hopefully will add up to doing something every day.

    —

    |

    No comments on Lent, Monday one.

  • Questions.

    In response to a reader question, agnostic sci-fi writer John Scalzi explains why he encourages his daughter to take an interest in faiths and in Christian faiths in particular.

    Worth reading, and I think many of his points apply to people who practice a faith and who naturally want their children educated deeply in it.  We shouldn't be afraid to encourage them to learn about other faiths, presented as fairly as possible (which doesn't mean, "their faith is as correct in its teachings as our faith;" but which does mean "here is what they believe, set out in the same kind of language they would use.")   Where other faiths raise questions about our own, after all, is an excellent place to offer some answers. 

    —

    |

    No comments on Questions.

  • Sins magnified.

    One of my Lenten disciplines is going to be to avoid political outrage on the Internet.  I think I've found a helpful mantra this morning, ironically, in a political-economic blog.

    From Megan McArdle:  A useful insight about the office of the President, one that extends to politics and politicians in general, and applies to both Dems and Repubs:

    To me, a better explanation [for the Obama administration's treatment of accused leaker Bradly Manning, which some argue constitutes torture] –one that explains the fact that there's not that much daylight between Bush and Obama on these issues–is that being president makes you want to do these things.  The president has access to more information than the rest of us…

    Not only does the president hear about threats we don't, but he's the guy who gets in trouble if any of these threats come off. The combination of heightened threat-alertness, and personal risk aversion, makes him willing to do bad things to avert the potential threat. And since the president knows that he's a good person, and the people around him are basically good people, he's willing to trust them with power that no institution should have.

    …I mean, I used to think that Janet Reno was evil–SWAT teams and tanks in child custody disputes? Really? Then we had a succession of new Attorneys General who all seemed to err on the side of megalomaniacal overreach. At which point I decided that it probably wasn't the person; it was the office. When you're sitting up there in that lofty perch, hearing about all the bad things that are happening in the country, and you know that you could do a lot more to fight them if you just had a little bit more power–well, sure, maybe it's not a good idea in abstract, but you're not going to abuse it, you're just trying to solve problems. Et voila, Waco.

    So too, I suspect, with tormenting prisoners, and civil liberties. Maybe if Mark and I were president, we'd support this stuff too. Which is not, by the way, an argument for doing it. It's an argument that we need to serve as a check on the president. Because we're not going to fix it by just electing a better person to be president. Whoever we elect will still be president, with all that implies.

    I think this is a good insight because it can help us avoid the temptation to assume bad faith, stupidity, or consciously evil motives — personal evil — in the officeholders we disagree with. 

    I think if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we all tend to give the guys "on our side" the benefit of the doubt while assailing the integrity of the guys on "the other side."  It's subtly dangerous to our own spirits to divide the political-social world up into good guys and bad guys. 

    Good ideas and bad ideas, or good actions and bad actions — sure!  

    Good people and evil people… stupid people and intelligent people… noble people and base people… not so much. 

    (And watch out for the temptation to insist, "I'm not saying he's an evil person, I'm saying he has evil motives!"  Since you can't actually observe motives the way you can observe actions and statements, and can only guess at them, to declare someone's motives bad is really just a circular way of declaring him a bad person:  you believe the motives to be bad because you believe him to be bad and therefore incapable of having good motives.  Fess up.)

    I get really tired of the "Obama is evil" movement, and am equally tired of the "Bush is evil" movement.  Similarly tired of the smaller "He or she is evil" movements that play out in smaller theaters, like the one going on now in the Wisconsin State Capitol building. 

    McArdle suggests that maybe it's just being President that tempts human beings to do apparently bad stuff.  Gee, I can't imagine that — holding one of the most powerful offices in the world, a severe temptation to evil acts and omissions?!?  Sarcasm aside, it also seems pretty obvious to me that men with different leanings would be tempted to a slightly different variety of evils, but also that universal desires — say, to increase one's own personal power, or to be thought well of by others, might lead to startlingly similar behaviors even by men of quite different political beliefs.  Hence McArdle's suggestion that this theory explains why President GW Bush's reviled policies towards certain prisoners appear to have been continued rather than reversed under President Obama.

    I think we would do well to reserve our indignation towards the personalities of our political opponents, even in the most upsetting of policy debates, even the ones that seem to us the starkest battlegrounds between good and evil.   Better, I think, to recognize that high offices themselves constitute high opportunities to commit dreadful sins and injustices.   Yes, they also present opportunities to do great good… which means nothing more than opportunities to commit terrible sins of omission.  

    And it's really just our preference for some sins over others that leads us to condemn some sinners over others, I think.  They're all freaking sinners, as are we.

    During this Lent, one way I'm going to temper my political outrage is by avoiding the blogs and websites that tend to exacerbate feelings of irritation.  (That's not all political blogs and websites, incidentally — some of them generally inform and entertain me without making me angry, at least if I don't go on to read the comments.)    But since it's impossible to avoid political information and opinion entirely, I think it will also help to have in my pocket the little mantra:  "It's not the person, it's the office."   Because without the publicity and power the office has granted, the officeholder's flaws would never, ever have become so magnified as to attract and hold my attention and my judgment, through my own distorted lens.

    —

    |

    1 comment on Sins magnified.

  • Just asking.

    In the comments to the last post, MrsDarwin mentioned the "Lord we just" phenomenon, which I have also noticed in ecumenical groups being led in prayer by a Protestant:

    Someone once described the sort of spontaneous group prayers as the "We just" prayers: "Lord, we just come before you today, and we just give you thanks for…"

    Curious,  I googled "Lord we just" and came up with this "How not to pray" page, presumably written by a Protestant:

    For some inexplicable reason, the word JUST shows up a lot in prayer. "Just" is used for pausing, for filler, as an adverb, for rhythm, and, well, to underscore that this is just prayer and not talking in general. Since this is not normally the case in human dialog, it is hard to explain why. This is also known as the JUST'n MARTYR PRAYER.

    "Lord, we JUST pray that you would JUST like, JUST really JUST totally…"

    The comment that this is "to underscore that this is … prayer and not talking in general" was interesting — linguistically I mean — is it serving as an interjection, a marker to denote "prayer-language?"  Maybe a cultural difference between Protestants and Catholics (or it could be a regional difference).  I have never heard a Catholic use gratuitous "justs" this way.

    Here's another example from a news article profiling some Christian mixed martial arts fighters:

    "Father, we just thank you for the opportunity to go out tonight and to train and compete," coach John Renken says. "Lord, we just pray that you protect our fighters, as well as the other guys. We pray that we will be a representation of you."

    And the comments thread on this post also seems to indicate that it's mostly a Protestant thing. 

    I wonder why that is?  Maybe the rote prayers lead us Catholics to expect a certain tone.  None of them have "just" in them.  We probably have a whole different set of verbal tics.

    "Lord, teach us to pray."

    —

    |

    10 comments on Just asking.

  • Rote prayer.

    Jen at Conversion Diary is going to blog the "Our Father," word by word.  I bet she comes up with some good stuff, though I hope she takes my combox advice to use the Latin as her guide — really, doesn't it make more sense to have one post entitled "Sanctificetur (May it be hallowed)" rather than one entitled "Hallowed" and another titled "Be"?  

    One commenter "Kimberlie" mentioned something that I wanted to address.

    As a convert to Catholicism, I dealt with lot’s of criticisms about “rote prayer.”

    …It’s good and well to have private prayer where we open our hearts to the Lord and pour out to Him. But, just because I don’t squinch up my eyes, throw up my hands, and make a long public extemporaneous prayer and choose instead to say the “Our Father,” that my prayer is somehow less valid. Jesus gave those words to the disciples after all.

    We Catholics and our rote prayers.  I frequently offer grace before meals, or hear it offered, among non-Catholic friends.

     When I speak, I always use the Catholic formula  Bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.  (Since I started teaching their kids Latin, I've been known to say the Benedic, Domine nos….) 

    And, of course, our friends who are followers of Christ but who are not Catholics don't lead mealtime graces with a formula, but according to their tradition always offer some brief, appropriate, gracious, spontaneous thanksgiving.  So I have had many opportunities to contemplate the "roteness" of the Catholic way of doing things.  I find that mealtime graces offer me a convenient way of thinking about it.

    Have you ever been at a meal or a Bible study or a commencement or something like that — among Protestants will do, but really anywhere — where one person stood up and offered a prayer on behalf of the group?  

    You know, the “Dear Lord, we thank you for gathering us all here today. Thank you for the food we are about to eat and for the fellowship of our friends. We ask that you bless our work and all we do. Amen.”

    So, what did you do? Did you plug your ears and silently pray your own personal prayer during that time? Probably not, though perhaps you may have quietly added some little personalization of your own. More likely if you were among fellow believers you listened respectfully to the speaker and took his words to heart, as long as he didn’t say anything outrageous. You internally affirmed what he was saying, or as much of it as you could with honesty, and with your “Amen,” you made his words your own, and meant them.

    This is what we are doing, I think, when we repeat the prayers of the Church. We are allowing ourselves to be led in prayer, listening to and submitting to someone else’s words — for no other reason than because we are a group, and our group has a leader.  

    When we repeat the words, we are trying to take them in, make them our own, and mean what they say.   What I am doing when I begin with "Bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts…"  is not all that different in form from the small effort I make, an effort of attention and assent, when I listen to my friends' mealtime prayers and add my "Amen" to theirs.  

    And how much more so should we conform our thoughts to the prayer led by Christ himself.

    —

    |

    5 comments on Rote prayer.

  • Could use a little advice here from the cradle Catholics.

    So one thing I really don't understand about how Lenten penances are supposed to work out within a family. 

    Do your children (older ones — say 8 year olds and up) take responsibility for their own Lenten devotion?

    As far as I know, "giving up something" for Lent is an optional devotion.  It's not optional that we have to observe Lent somehow, with prayer, fasting, penance, almsgiving.  But, say, "giving up chocolate" for Lent, that kind of thing, that's traditional but not obligatory.  Right?

    So, as a mother, I feel like my role ought to be to encourage my kids to come up with a Lenten sacrifice and follow through with it.  But I'm really uncomfortable with enforcing it in any way, or even with making gentle reminders.

    (Yes, it's my role to enforce religious obligations, e.g., Sunday Mass attendance — I'm talking about optional devotions.)

     If they were much more mature, like 16 or older, it would definitely be inappropriate for me to butt into their private spiritual lives.  Also, by that time, they should be able to take responsibility themselves for their own sacrifices — they should be totally voluntary.  I'm clear on the concept for older kids and adults.

    So should they be voluntary from the beginning?

    Let me give an example.  When my oldest was eight, he announced he was going to give up ketchup for Lent.  I thought that was a really great sacrifice  for a kid — doable, but noticeable.  For the first couple of weeks he went without ketchup.  Then one night he forgot and put it on his plate.  Just as a reminder — not at all in a punitive way, I swear — I said, "Hey, did you forget that you gave up ketchup for Lent?"   And he got this look on his face that said I know.  Please don't remind me.    A few more times that happened, and then by the end it was clear that he didn't want to give up ketchup anymore.  I stopped reminding him.  It felt wrong to "nag" about something that was technically optional and that, if he were fully grown, would be totally his own business.  It definitely felt wrong to speak to him about it at the dinner table, in front of people.  

    I get even more nervous when my son announces that he's going to give up something that I just know is going to be really hard for him.  Like, "I'll give up video games."  Great, I think, it's really a good idea, but… do you expect me to be your policeman?  Like, when you're at your friends' house and they're all playing video games, do you want me to come down the stairs and say, "Hey, 10-year-old, you told me you were giving up video games for Lent, so put down the controller?"

    I don't have an example for how to do this.  I was not a child growing up in a practicing-Catholic family.   I literally do not know how to encourage a Lenten devotion without becoming Lent Cop Mom. 

    Seriously.  Help me out here.  And if you have a blog which gets more traffic than mine, how about asking your readers?  Because I have a feeling I need a lot of ideas.

    UPDATE:  Oh, good, Jen at Conversion Diary has kindly linked to my question!  That should help.  So has the other Jennifer, Fitz at Riparians at the Gate.

    —

    |

    23 comments on Could use a little advice here from the cradle Catholics.

  • “Training for Motherhood.”

    Here's a ten-minute "functional fitness" strength-training workout for moms, designed to keep you strong enough to pick up your heavy kids, from Kara at Mama Sweat (and Ryan McDowell and Darcy Franklin of Crossfit Minnesota).  When Darcy demonstrates picking up an item like a medicine ball or a car seat and using its weight as resistance, she notes that you can use your child's weight instead.  I assume some of us would have to work up to that…

    , 

    I've been enjoying her blog so much, I'm really looking forward to when Kara's book comes out!

    Kara explains what is "functional fitness:"

     

    You've probably heard the term "functional fitness" being thrown around a lot the last few years. (It's listed at #9 on the American College of Sports Medicine's Top 20 Fitness Trends for 2011 and is the main reason why boot camp classes are so popular.) What I once considered the territory of an occupational or physical therapist–using exercises to rehabilitate and strengthen specific muscles involved in their patient's particular activities of daily living–is catching on to the fitness masses. And why not? Why not strengthen your muscles in ways you're going to actually USE them?

    Since ditching 5-lb. dumbells (because really, do I ever do 25 reps of bicep curls with a soup can before serving it to my family?) for a 45-lb, 65-lb, 85-lb and beyond barbell I am training for motherhood: Carrying a sleeping 7-year-old from the car upstairs to her bed; lifting my 5-year-old from the ground after a fall; playing airplane with my 2-year-old high above my head.

    No doubt about it, motherhood requires some heavy lifting.

    Follow the link to Kara's post to see another video in which Ryan (the male trainer), who has small twin boys at home himself, explains what "functional fitness" means for a parent of small children.

    (I took a running clinic from Darcy a few months ago, held at that same CrossFit facility.  I was really impressed by the CrossFit philosophy, and I was very pleased with my results!)

     

     

    —

    |

    No comments on “Training for Motherhood.”

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Categories

…more to come later