Where Have All the Lutherans Gone?

Talking with Scottius led me to blog today about something that I think about a lot, which is why there doesn't seem to be a strong conservative Lutheran community. The church Mr. BTEG and I currently belong to is a good distance away from our home, to begin with. While I suppose it would be asking too much to have a solid church actually in my community, it'd be nice to have one closer by. I don't feel any sort of connection to anyone at my current church. In addition, there's not really much of a strong Lutheran presence online anymore. Not only are bloggers gone, but people that I used to see on Google Plus aren't there, and Facebook is dying all on its own. When you don't have a church family, and you don't have an online church family, you can start feeling pretty detached from your church.

I've Finally Seen This in a Version That Lutherans Can Relate To

A Nice Round Number

I have reached my thousandth blog post! In all the years since 2005(!), I've met a lot of great people, written some things I'm really proud of, discovered a lot of things about other people, life and myself, and generally had fun. A blog is actually wonderful for someone like me, a stay-at-home mom in a world where it's harder to meet and make friends with other moms, especially if you are an introvert. But I mainly enjoy just getting my point of view out, whether it's about being a mom, a wife, a conservative, a Lutheran, bipolar or anything else. At least some of the next one thousand posts are sure to be on watching my daughters reach maturity, as well as making changes in my own life as my mommy duties decrease. Can't wait to see where it's going!

And Now, We Recuperate

Just got back from four days spent in Missouri at the latest Higher Things conference. Higher Things is an organization that teaches the Lutheran faith to young people. It is a great organization. This was the Musician's fourth year, and now that the Dancer has been confirmed, she was eligible to attend as well. We attended the conference in Missouri because the Musician already has a large number of friends from previous conferences that were going to attend this one. Because we didn't know anyone else from our area who was attending, Mr. BTEG and I drove the family to Missouri and stayed in a hotel while the girls were at the conference. As a result of the heat wave and the fact that there turned out to be not much of anything to do in Maryville, Missouri, our side of the trip was rather uneventful, but the girls learned a lot, had a lot of fun, and made even more new friends. It does feel good to be home, especially after pulling an all-nighter to get home from Missouri without booking yet another hotel room. More posts will follow about the trip!

Love, Marriage and the Patriarchy

This post has become very long. For those of you who already know about Eve Ensler and V-Day and the left-wing feminist agenda, move on to the next post above. If you want to understand the background of the above post, or you want to read my ramblings about the subject, keep reading!

Some hard-core leftist feminists apparently don't enjoy watching others celebrate romance and happiness on Valentine's Day. They had to come up with V-Day, to highlight violence against women. As the article I linked too describes, yes, violence against women is tragic, it is real, and it should be stopped whenever possible. However, linking it with Valentine's Day is seen by many women, like the women of the Independent Women's Forum, and myself, as an assault on normal, romantic relationships between men and women. My husband and I have a stable and loving relationship. I chose to get married, to have children, to be a stay-at-home mom. My husband and I made the decision for me to homeschool our children, and we ultimately made the decision to send them to public school. I'm not a victim of the patriarchy. Since most of my regular readers are also in stable marriages, I think you would agree that marriage and family can be a good thing.

Where the left-wing feminists go wrong in their V-Day approach, I think is two-fold. One, linking violence against women to simple, everyday loving marriages and male-female relationships. Two, thinking that constantly drawing attention to something will somehow magically end it. How much sense does pushing "Valentine's Day as V-Day until the violence stops" really make? I find it hard to believe that leftists really believe in the perfection of humanity, and yet the women that promote V-Day seem to. Welcome to real life, and real, fallen humanity, and a world where there will always be people who are violent, selfish, murderous, debauched, physically ill, mentally ill. I wonder if the Lutheran concept of vocation does not come into play here. I can feel sorrow for tragic events that take place far away, but my real vocation is helping my neighbor, the person that is here in front of me. Putting a sticker on my car that says "Free Tibet" will not free Tibet. Giving my out-of-work neighbor a bag of groceries will help feed a family.

Or are these women just pushing their agenda, that women are victims constantly in need of help, constantly need Daddy Government looking out for them? It's easy to proclaim you'll push X until Y happens, when you know Y will never happen, if your real goal is just to push X. Either way, their ideas and worldview are miles away from me, and I think they would realize that, and despise me for it. What I wonder about it is the people who think, or pretend to think, that this stuff is mainstream, and I'll explain why in my next post.

Christians, to the Paschal Victim

A friend who does hymn podcasts has come out with his first hymn video. You can check out his blog here. By the way, one of the churches featured in this video is the one where the Dancer received new life in baptism.

My Jacket Is SO Not Satin!

I'm referring to this post, in which Iowahawk details the horrors to which the British sailors were subject after their capture by the scary, scary Lutherans, such as being forced to drink cold beer. Yeah, try not to laugh too hard. At least we didn't force the tuna casserole on them.

h/t to the Aardvark.