today’s sermon: giving

This blog is getting very preachy, so why stop now?

This is my very own sermon about “giving”. You know, like those encouraging speeches that are given prior to passing around the collection plate (or credit card form) in the mega-churches. Here is my version of the giving speech.

First Bible verse:

“Give to anyone who asks, and if they take what belongs to you, do not demand it back” – Luke 6:30. This leads into the universal golden rule “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” This suggests that giving should follow a request rather than just occur in a willy nilly fashion, making it somehow easier to decide who or when to give something.

Things we can give to others:

- time

- money

- praise

- care

- energy

- possessions

- hospitality

The list is probably endless, think of anything you have ever been given or given to someone else.

Next Bible verse:

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” – Luke 12: 48

Then put the two things together. Think of something you have been blessed with or given abundantly in your life. Maybe you are someone who has been loved extravagantly, or received a lot of praise for something, or you are just filthy rich. You might have been cared for through a long illness, or someone has just given you all their baby clothes. Anything.

The point is, maybe the thing you have been given, you are also expected to give to others. Hand it on down the chain, that sort of thing.

Whatever you are rich in, maybe it’s praise and accolades, maybe it’s love, money, caring or even time. Find someone who has less than you have – and give them that.

benefits of earlier parenting

As someone who had kids fairly late in life, I have had the advantage of more stability in many ways (social, mental and financial!) which hopefully has given my kids some benefit as I’m more mature as a mother than I would have been 10 years earlier. I observe this trend of later motherhood and for many people like me it turns out fine in the end, but not for all. However, there is a part of me that believes this is not the natural or most ideal state of affairs, that maybe humans as a species are actually designed in many different ways to reproduce earlier. Here’s why.

The biological side is obvious, there is the obvious problem with declining fertility in males and females. All the infertility experts urge us to start earlier. There is a greater risk of pregnancy complications, birth defects, miscarriage, just about any problem. Older mothers have less energy to stay up all night and run around after the little ones.

What about the psychological or emotional side? I’m really only referring to Western society here, and I am still considering this theory so it’s a work in progress, bear with me. Younger adults or adolescents have different brains, which become “adult” in structure only at around 25. Young people are highly social and connected, concerned with forming their identity. Sometimes they  are more impulsive, flexible, risk-takers with a lack of empathy and a sense of invincibility. They are also highly social. All this is now confirmed with brain research that shows our brain connections are not fully established until the mid-20s.

If child-rearing was to occur in the teens or early 20’s , psychologically parents would be more flexible, able to cope with chaotic baby behaviour without too much need to impose an artificial routine. The highly social nature of teenagers is also adaptive because a social environment is necessary or extremely preferable for children. The effect of having a baby is (for most people) to increase empathy or the ability to put another’s needs before your own. So I think the benefit of early parenting (for the parent) would be actually to help emotional development, at a critical time of development, onto a more productive and cooperative path. We know from psychology that cooperativeness is a great character strength which leads to positive health outcomes (There are other parts of this theory that don’t work like impulsivity & invincibility, so I am working on those)

Socially, having children earlier would have benefits for the extended family. Grandparents would be younger, and could therefore support parents more, rather than having children when one’s own parents are very old and may require care themselves. Having children earlier would mean that they were able to help the parents to care for their own grandparents in old age.

I would see all this as having a benefit for babies in terms of attachment. A more highly supported social network for the mother may lead to a secure baby. Of course a theory like this can’t be universal and I guess there are down sides to this as well.

Why is parenting delayed? These days, largely because of financial expectations we expect to establish careers and do a lot of intellectual work (at least in the West) in our teens and 20s – to get into a reasonable financial position before we have the children. However this kind of career focus requires the maturity of a more adult brain, and in some ways it would be better to wait until over 25 when we may have more capacity for self-knowledge to choose an appropriate career path, wisdom to make responsible decisions for society and the persistence or discipline required for a complex workplace.

The other reason is relationships. People in their 20s now have the cultural expectation of transient relationships, often based on pleasure and self gratification, multiple relationships in order to find the best fit “try before you buy” without expectation of commitment or care of the other. We also expect to have “fun” and leisure before settling down to the “hard slog” of parenting, but I’ll get to that later. I think there is some evidence that this approach to relationships might be damaging. We know that broken relationships can be a grief event, and some of the most traumatic experiences from a psychological, mental health point of view – leading to depression, suicide and insecurity. By practicing serial monogomy or low-commitment and low-care relationships we are actually un-learning the art of real relationship by practising uncaring behaviours. This is actually bad for us in the long run, and sometimes it takes a long time to catch up and heal from the wounds of multiple relationship losses.

Anyway, that’s about all for this theory for today – as I said it’s a work in progress and so it could probably use some references, but this blog is just about ideas, not necessarily references!

Adios for today.

ten interesting websites

It’s pretty hard to keep up the blogging post month whatever thing. Running out of inspiration fast, so today’s post will be dedicated to other people’s ideas! Here are ten interesting blogs & websites, in no particular order.

1. Vintage November. Amanda’s gorgeous site with a lovely dress each day for the month. I feel privileged to actually know Amanda in person.

2. Doctor woman. Another mother / woman / doctor / Christian blog. Thoughtful writing and someone I can relate to a lot.

3. Charlotte’s web. My old favourite from the old blogging days (2006-7) good to see Charlotte is still going strong.

4. Creative nonfiction. This is a journal website and also a facebook group, accepts submissions for essays. Here is the definition of creative nonfiction:

“The word “creative” refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.”

5. CiteULike. A useful site for storing journal references or creating a library of bookmarks for just about anything.

6. Karaoke Sydney. I like this site because it has a lot of detail about where you can go in Sydney to sing Karaoke. It contains a map for several different days of the week, as well as reviews on some of the venues.

7. Po Bronson. This man wrote possibly the most interesting book of biographical case histories I have ever read, called “What Should I Do With My Life” and has subsequently written other very interesting books including one on parenting.

8. Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. A link to book review of this famous book by the man with a very long name. I really wish I had found, bought and read this book by now (along with the other 137 books which are sitting on my bedside table bookshelves or in fact still in the shop waiting to be read by me) but reading this review I almost don’t have to read the book.

9. Journey Mama. Someone else who is trying to do a BloPoMo (why do we do this again?) and has an interesting life.

10. Last but not least, godless monkey. Who knows what this blog is about, I found it at the “alpha inventions” blog randomiser and I just like the name.

That’s it for today – what a struggle!

 

the white elephant is back

Greetings all – the white elephant is back!

It has been over 2 years and the white elephant has been heavily occupied with other pressing matters (the youngest of whom is now 18 months and the older 2 are nearly 4!)

However, while I’ve been away there has been a constant incoming stream of comments about one particular post I wrote back in 2006. I now have 163 collected stories from readers about “tsunami dreams” – obviously an issue that many of us share! There have also been a lot of comments about “thanatophobia” go figure! This steady reminder from blog readers has inspired me to resurrect the white elephant.

So I’ve decided to promote the tsunami dreams topic to its own pages (see menu) to hopefully make navigation easier. I have put all the comments up on their own page, and will try to find more information about this topic!

Generally speaking I’ve also been on facebook which has taken away some of my need to blog (I hate to admit!) but the writing bug never dies, it just goes underground for long periods…

I’ve noticed that many people I used to read are still blogging! So I look forward to coming to visit.

eight point definition of a cult

Eight Marks of a Mind-Control Cult

by Randall Watters

Brainwashing has become almost a household word in the last two decades or so. In 1961, Robert J. Lifton wrote the definitive book on the subject, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, after studying the effects of mind control on American prisoners of war under the Communist Chinese. Lifton outlines eight major factors that can be used to identify whether a group is a destructive cult or not. Any authoritarian religion should be held up to the light in order to determine just how destructive their influence is on their members. Judge for yourselves.

Milieu Control

“Milieu” is a French word meaning “surroundings; environment.” Cults are able to control the environment around their recruits in a number of ways, but almost always using a form of isolation. Recruits can be physically separated from society, or they can be warned under threat of punishment to stay away from the world’s educational media, especially when it might provoke critical thinking. Any books, movies or testimonies of ex-members of the group, or even anyone critical of the group in any way are to be avoided.

Information is carefully kept on each recruit by the mother organization. All are watched, lest they fall behind or get too far ahead of the thinking of the organization. Because it appears that the organization knows so much about everything and everyone, they appear omniscient in the eyes of the recruits.

Mystical Manipulation

In religious cults, God is ever-present in the workings of the organization. If a person leaves for any reason, accidents or ill-will that may befall them are always attributed to God’s punishment on them. For the faithful, the angels are always said to be working, and stories circulate about how God is truly doing marvelous things among them, because they are “the truth.” The organization is therefore given a certain “mystique” that is quite alluring to the new recruit.

Demand for Purity

The world is depicted as black and white, with little room for making personal decisions based on a trained conscience. One’s conduct is modeled after the ideology of the group, as taught in its literature. People and organizations are pictured as either good or evil, depending on their relationship to the cult.

Universal tendencies of guilt and shame are used to control individuals, even after they leave. There is great difficulty in understanding the complexities of human morality, since everything is polarized and oversimplified. All things classified as evil are to be avoided, and purity is attainable through immersion into the cult’s ideology.

The Cult of Confession

Serious sins (as defined by the organization) are to be confessed immediately. The members are to be reported if found walking contrary to the rules.

There is often a tendency to derive pleasure from self-degradation through confession. This occurs when all must confess their sins before each other regularly, creating an intense kind of “oneness” within the group. It also allows leaders from within to exercise authority over the weaker ones, using their “sins” as a whip to lead them on.

The “Sacred Science”

The cult’s ideology becomes the ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence. The ideology is too “sacred” to call into question, and a reverence is demanded for the leadership. The cult’s ideology makes an exaggerated claim for possessing airtight logic, making it appear as absolute truth with no contradictions. Such an attractive system offers security.

Loading the Language

Lifton explains the prolific use of “thought-terminating cliches,” expressions or words that are designed to end the conversation or controversy. We are all familiar with the use of the cliches “capitalist” and “imperialist,” as used by antiwar demonstrators in the 60’s. Such cliches are easily memorized and readily expressed. They are called the “language of non-thought,” since the discussion is terminated, not allowing further consideration.

In the Watchtower, for instance, expressions such as “the truth”, the “mother organization”, the “new system”, “apostates” and “worldly” carry with them a judgment on outsiders, leaving them unworthy of further consideration.

Doctrine Over Person

Human experience is subordinated to doctrine, no matter how profound or contradictory such experiences seem. The history of the cult is altered to fit their doctrinal logic. The person is only valuable insomuch as they conform to the role models of the cult. Commonsense perceptions are disregarded if they are hostile to the cult’s ideology.

Dispensing of Existence

The cult decides who has the “right” to exist and who does not. They decide who will perish in the final battle of good over evil. The leaders decide which history books are accurate and which are biased. Families can be cut off and outsiders can be deceived, for they are not fit to exist!

personality and coping style

interesting article fromOmnus

A-da! baby language

This may be a post-in-progress…

My 11 month twins are already inventing a language, but it has very few words so far.

The most important word is “A-da!” (emphasis on the second syllable) sometimes also prnounced “Hadda”. This word is basically a pronouncement, it has several meanings including “Here it is”, “Look at this”, “Gee mum, why does that funny thing do that?”, “I’m here” “You’re here” etc.

Other words of secondary importance include:
- “Mamamamama” (loud) It’s not what you might think! It actually means “Give me that food right away” – an alternative version is “Nanananana”
- “Nim nim” means “this food looks nice”
- “Bwee” this is a controversial one, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact meaning, and may in fact have many different meanings. It can be thoughtful “I wonder what’s going on here” or jocular “this is fun”
- “Aaaaa” in a semi-whisper of awe means “This is really amazing” as in “that cup fits inside the other one!”
- “Ha” (loud, multiple while crawling) means “Wow, look at all this new stuff, I’m finding lots of things here”

10 things to do (every day) in November

We already have:

1. NaNoWriMo (National novel writing month)
2. NaBloPoMo (National blog posting month)

(Incidentally, I think these are actually international rather than national but I’ll just ignore this technicality) But what else could we dedicate a month to? Here are some other ideas:

3. NaNoTeMo
National No Television Month – my husband really wants to do this and we have been intending to try it for about 2 years. Something always comes up, ie Australian Idol or some more worthwhile TV show. As he is a school teacher, he is also thinking of getting all the kids to try it at school, it could even be sponsored with proceeds to charity.

4. NaHuBaMo
National Hug a Baby Month – well this is no challenge for me, but it might be nice for getting extended families together and all the kiddies would get lots of cuddles.

5. NaWaDoMo
National Walk the Dog Month. My poor neglected canine would love this one, and I would be so much fitter. Walking dogs is great for your mental health as well as bodily health. It means getting out in a nice environment, exercising, bonding with someone who loves you and meeting new people.

6. NaNoChoMo
This one would be great for me. National no chocolate month. I once succeeded in losing about 5 kilos and it was done by giving up chocolate, my greatest weakness.

7. NaShoStoMo
National short story month. Write a short story every day. Somewhat more do-able than a novel, in my opinion.

8. NaDaHoMo – National dance around the house month.
9. NaSiShoMo – National sing in the shower month
10. NaCaFriMo – National call a friend month

Articles (psychiatry)

The good news: suicide rates have fallen significantly in Australia from 1997 to 2004. The bad news: suicides continue to rise in indigenous populations, particularly the Top End. (MJA)

Neonatal exposure to SSRIs is showing some undesirable outcomes including lower birth weights, respiratory distress and jaundice. These outcomes are worse than those in offspring of depressed mothers.

And finally, more grim news. paternal age is a risk factor for autism, seeming to be most pronounced after a paternal age of 40. However the risk has jumped from 9 to 32 per 100 000 – not a huge number.

Steve Irwin’s memorial service

Inadvertently found myself watching Steve’s memorial; one of the dubious advantages of motherhood is the opportunity to watch daytime TV. Well, I never knew Steve Irwin or watched his TV shows, or had any major objections to him.

But I found myself being inspired by him, as a memorial service is supposed to do. Everyone mentioned his passion for wildlife: the guy certainly had oodles and oodles of energy (which I wish I had…)

Inadvertently found myself blubbering like an idiot when his little daughter came on the stage, and confidently read her eulogy. What a smart, cute little thing and how much she loved and admired her daddy. I can see now that no man will ever live up to him, for her.

John Howard opened the proceedings with a vaguely ominous sounding speech containing a neat serving of “Aussie” cliches. I don’t know what his vision for this country is, but I’m becoming more frightened all the time.

Anthony from the Wiggles was great, what a good choice of speaker. Then there were the inevitable songs, “true blue” and “home among the gumtrees” among them. Some very famous people got up and said how great Steve was, I found myself believing them, I am sure they really did love Steve. And he wasn’t just a macho risk taking adrenalin junkie showoff, but I have now learned the guy was an actual conservationist. That probably isn’t news to anyone but me. He was almost going to be awarded an honorary Professorship by some university.

And with some good street cred (or land cred) from our friendly indigenous leaders we farewelled a true giant of a man, Steve Irwin.