The Supper of the Lamb

by Elanor

(finally, as promised)

This post is about depression. Having recently emerged from several months of it, I would like to say some things about what it is like.

Whether or not I can blame my depression on the birth control pills does not matter. When I was depressed, I couldn’t see what was around me. I looked around my apartment, along the roads through Berkeley, and at my husband, and I couldn’t find anything worthwhile. I’ve heard depression described as a fog coming down over your vision; I would describe it more like a decaying of my spirit. I saw the same bright sunlight reflecting shapes and colors back at me that everyone else sees, but I attached no joy to the sight, I did not care to see it.

This post is also about the opposite of depression.

The Supper of the Lamb is a cookbook filled with the spirit of life. It is not, as most culinary books are, a recipe book. Those useful tools help pass on the knowledge of experienced, creative chefs to puling amateurs by recording the ingredients and process of preparing certain dishes. The Supper of the Lamb, by contrast, is a cookbook: it is a book about cooking. And, more than that, I believe it is incomparable evidence that the Bible is relevant to our everyday lives. It is proof that Christianity involves more than giving assent to some abstract propositions, but rather is a transformation of the mind and heart that works itself out in even the simplest aspects of going about our daily business.

The Christian spirit of the book expresses itself in its delight in things. Six whole pages of the book are devoted to describing an onion. This was not a description of the uses of the onion, nor did it cover its cultivation or anatomy. It was the author’s attempt to guide the reader in meeting an onion face to face. It helped me encounter the spirit of an onion.

Why on earth would it matter to encounter the spirit of an onion, you might ask. And the only answer that can be given is: because it is an onion, and nothing else. The Supper of the Lamb helps its readers to understand how God the Father was moved to create the world. It gives us a glimpse of His immense delight and imagination, because it opens our eyes to the individual objects of His creativity. Why did God make an onion different from a shallot? Why are there yellow onions and red onions, pearl onions and green onions—which are different from leeks? Because God was overjoyed at each thing in its own right. God looked at His array of onion species, He observed each one carefully, pointed His infinite divine finger at it, and proclaimed, “This is good!”

When I was depressed, all objects, events, and people in the world blurred together into a drab greyness. The Supper of the Lamb called attention to individual objects in all of their splendid individuality. The opposite of depression, therefore, is delight. It is the enjoyment of particular things—the ecstasy of particulars—that God has made. The Supper of the Lamb delights its way through the cooking of a meal from start to finish. It speaks of everything involved, the cookware, the place settings, the wine, and the cuts of lamb, with an intimacy borne of a long and affectionate relationship—thus teaching me how to look at the items in my own kitchen, and from there, objects outside my house, and from there, the people that God has given me to treasure.

If I go through each day seeing every knife in my kitchen as being its own unique self, if I can encounter the herbs in the pantry with my mind open to learning who they are instead of trying to find the one listed in the recipe book, I am relating to creation as God meant me to when He first presented it to Adam in the garden. And if, miracle of miracles, God bestows on me the blessing of seeing the spectacular individuality of each person I encounter, then I will be on my way to knowing what real love is like, I will begin to glimpse why in some cases it might make sense to send your only Son, so that this one single person, gloriously different from every other person ever created, should not perish but should have everlasting life.

South Africa

Apparently, Edwin and I cannot find the time to update this blog more than once a month. The length of time between posts necessitates that they be weighted more on the side of daily life updates and less on the side of theological reflection than I am used to.

This post is unfortunately not about The Supper of the Lamb, although I am still firmly resolved to write about that outstanding book when I can muster up the energy. It is about our upcoming trip to South Africa.

On June 23, Edwin and I leave for Johannesburg. We are going to spend one week doing Vacation Bible School with a mass of Chinese elementary school kids; then we move onwards and upwards to running a youth camp for a smaller mass of Chinese high school kids the second week.

This past Sunday, we met with Simon and Naomi, the other members of our team, to plan the youth camp. The four of us are in charge of all the events during that week: six messages, three workshops, morning devotions, afternoon games, and sharing around the campfire on the last day. Perhaps because there were only four of us, the meeting did not waste anyone’s time. Even though we came to the table with only a vague idea of the general theme of the camp, we managed to plan the topics of each message and divvy them up for individual preparation. It was not until the end of the meeting that I realized how surprising it was that we all seemed to have the same vision for where the South Africa youth were at and for what we wanted to share with them about the Good News of Jesus.

The theme of the youth camp is “The Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me,” inspired by the song “The World Will Never Take,” by whatever Christian band that is. Our six messages to convey the theme that having a relationship with God is the best thing that can possibly happen to anyone are as follows:

Tuesday morning: The difference between the world’s best and God’s best.
Tuesday night: Sin.
Wednesday morning: God’s radical, mysterious, and creative love.
Wednesday night: Carrying the cross.
Thursday morning: Service and community.
Thursday night: Recap and campfire.

In the past years, many of the kids to come to the youth camp have been either young in their faith or non-Christians. We hope, during this camp, to create for them a picture of lives that are completely different than the ones they are now living, in order to convince them that having God enter into their lives in a lasting and permanent way is the best thing that can ever happen to them.

We would greatly appreciate your prayers for our trip. If you would like to receive prayer requests and more frequent updates, please email us at eledlin@gmail.com

All the best,
Elanor

All New.

Since I'm supposed to be preparing a lesson for youth group on Friday on the topic of Friendship, I thought it would be a good time to finally update the blog.

I've done a lot of things since I wrote last. I have NOT written the essay I'm supposed to write on Atlas Shrugged, because I've developed such a strong disappointment for the book that I firmly refuse to look at it again until I know for sure that I am going to college. I am eagerly awaiting April 30, when I will finally know whether or not I have joined this year's swelled ranks of disappointed Berkeley applicants.

I HAVE successfully kept the two of us fed over the three to four days a week we live at our apartment in Berkeley.

I have NOT spent a single cent of our money on clothing since the wedding. (Although I did use a Kohl's gift certificate to buy a pair of work pants and a pair of walking shoes).

I HAVE gone to the gym more than 10 times in the last three weeks. (This entails a 40 minute walk each way).

I have NOT lost any weight.

I HAVE gone through a difficult run of hormonal mood swings, ranging from slightly bored to more than a little depressed. But I am convinced that this is normal for newlywed unemployed women taking birth control pills. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that in public or not...

The good news is: I am still married to the best man in the world, and I am NO LONGER unemployed. I started working for Lindamood Bell again, the tutoring company I was at last summer. And I like it.

However, while the depression has left me for now, I am determined to keep the truth I learned in the meantime. Which brings me to the title of this post and this blog: All New.

Edwin and I started this blog in the space of fifteen minutes as a way to communicate wedding information to our guests. We didn't think much of the title, all that it meant was this was a new blog, and we were starting a new life together. We stuck the "all" at the beginning to be reminiscent of the verse Jesus makes all things new, and because it sounded cool. This thought process took probably thirty seconds. Then we moved on to fill in the next box on the web page.

Little did I know at the time how relevant the word "all" would be to me as we embarked upon the adventure of married life. I knew that some things would be new: my location, my occupation, my last name, and the boy in the bed (who, thank goodness, does not snore!!). Not to mention all of the amazing cookware ^_^. But I didn't think it would ALL be new. In fact, for some things, I was pretty sure they would stay the same. Silly of me.

The most important new thing is my relationship with God. Before Edwin and I started dating, God and I were solid. We had spent the last three years getting to know one another intimately, and I was sure nothing could happen to what I had with Him. But I underestimated what it means to know God. Since I have been married, the way I relate to God has changed a lot. It has been very confusing. For months, I thought I couldn't hear or feel Him at all. But that story is a whole post to itself. It is enough to say, this is the beginning of a kind of knowing that I never imagined.

Proceeding down the line of things that are important to me, the next new thing is my self. Whenever I feel unhappy (as tends to be the case when I am depressed), I philosophize. I make a desperate grasp back at the beginning of time, and try to understand my current situation in light of the fundamental principles of the universe. This is rarely helpful. But I found it interesting to observe the kinds of questions I was asking myself: Why am I here? What do I want to do with my life? What is my purpose?

I think, somewhere deep down, my subconscious had always assumed that as soon as I got married, all of those questions would be answered. Marriage, after all, is the place where love is grown, and love IS the fundamental principle of the universe. Thus, if I live my life accordingly, I should be set, and my questions should be answered. Luckily, I still abound with questions, even though I am happily married. Life would be so boring otherwise.

So I did not find all the answers. But I did find out that, as is the case with my relationship with God, my understanding of who I am as a person is becoming something new. Rather, I am becoming a new person, and my understanding of who I am is consequently changing as I do. I don’t know why I am so surprised that this happened. It actually happens every time I go to a new place. But I experience the change more drastically in marriage, because Edwin is around all the time. The things I once used to identify myself—English literature, for example, and C. S. Lewis—I don’t have as much time for those things if Edwin doesn’t like them. He is not forbidding me to have my own interests, and I still do have them. But more and more, I find myself gravitating towards the things we share, so that we can experience them together. And it is good.

Coming soon: (so as to hold myself accountable for writing it) a Book Review on The Supper of the Lamb. Aka: Elanor gushes unabashedly about the wonders of this unbelievable cookbook/essay on love/“romp through the human condition,” as one review calls it, and does all she can to persuade you to read it.

Atlas Shrugged

by Ayn Rand, critiqued by Elanor

I am disappointed. I read the first 500 pages of this 1,167 page book. I took my time, I didn't skim a single word. Ayn Rand's writing is good enough to bear close reading, for the first half of the book. The problem was, the story should have ended at page 501. I did not need another 600 pages pounding the same single idea into my head. Her claim might have been interesting at first, as was the alternate timeline in which the world had been overrun by socialism, but as the plot progressed, her characters became flatter instead of gaining more depth.

Then around page 550 came a six-page-long encomium (poem in praise of an abstract quality) on, of all things, money. To Ayn Rand, money is the representation of the human spirit; it is that which gives mankind the dignity that separates us from beasts. I could not take her seriously after that.

My attention was temporarily recaptured, later, when Rand began to spatter her characters' dialogue with specifically Christian terminology in order to present these values as misguided and, in their most extreme forms, evil. In Rand's world, charity is the worst sin, selfishness the highest virtue. The savior of humanity lives by these words: "I swear--by my life and my love of it--that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

I do not believe Rand is entirely wrong. She has only misunderstood the concept of charity. She sees it as "alms;" she believes the weak attempt to leech love off of the strong by imposing upon them a sense of guilt at the suffering around them. She spends way too many pages explaining this belief. In some ways, she is right, and in those ways, her massive novel is only an interminable expansion on C. S. Lewis's short sentences in The Great Divorce, something to the effect of: "misery cannot be allowed to blackmail joy."

However, Rand's perspective falls short of the truth of human nature because she is completely individualistic. If the highest virtue is for each person to live solely for his own sake, then the only relationships between individuals can be those of trade--which she fully admits and recommends. She says love should not be "given" to another person for nothing; she implies it is shameful to love a human being for nothing but "himself;" rather, it is good and right to exchange virtue for love as if paying for an order of steel railroad tracks.

Atlas Shrugged lacks depth because it does not take into account the nature of relationships between human beings. The highest state of existence is not one man standing alone at the top of the world looking back on what he has achieved; it is instead the man who gives up the world for the sake of another human being.

I came to the book expecting to find truth; I did not.

Addicted.

by Elanor, without regret


Starring Nathan Fillion, Firefly

The Guild
Written by and Starring Felicia Day, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog


hmm. the embed thing sort of worked. the guild website doesn't have an embed option though, or not one that i could find.

Obituary

by Elanor, with regret

If you look down at the previous post, you can find above the label "Elanor's pet #2" a picture of a lovely, glowing ranunculus. After a long and courageous struggle, this flower sadly passed away on Sunday, March 8, and has now moved on to a better existence (or not, depending on your theology).

The plant was purchased in the Garden section at the Target located next to Berkeley. Who could know that, for a pittance of $5, a blooming being could bring so much joy to one apartment? Its owner brought it home, transplanted it into a more permanent pot, and proceeded to welcome it into the Lin residence.

Its life was not without struggle. The tap water at the above mentioned residence apparently did not agree with the brave plant's constitution. If you look more closely at the picture, you will observe a slight yellowing of the outer leaves. This greatly distressed the owner, but there was nothing to be done except continue watering and hope the plant's spirit would win out.

The first weekend, the Lins had to leave the plant in the apartment for three days while they attended to their episcopal and social commitments in San Jose. Even though they made sure to water the plant within 30 seconds of departing, upon their return the top soil was completely dry, and there were even more yellow leaves.

Seeing that the plant was not yet robust enough to fend for itself without supervision, the next weekend, the owners brought it along to San Jose. The car ride filled the plant with joy and terror. The sunlight streaming through the windshield sent it into glowing rapture, but along with this intoxication came the rattle and jolt of a car driving down ill-paved roads. The pot shook and the plant's leaves were jostled until it couldn't tell its roots from its petals.

Once in Cupertino, the plant's owner was getting desperate. The plant was still yellowing, and its petals were beginning to droop. She decided to try moving the plant to a bigger pot, to allow its roots more space. She obtained a new pot from the back yard, cleaned it, and transferred the plant yet again, hoping beyond hope that this new change would spark some health back into the fading flower.

It might have worked. We shall never know. On Sunday morning, since they were on their way back to Berkeley, the Lins brought the plant with them to church. It was cool in the early morning. The plant remained in the front seat during Sunday school at South Valley. At 10:45, the Lins made their way to Cupertino to attend the Joint's Sunday service. When they disembarked from their vehicle at 11:15, the sun was still hidden behind grey clouds, so they again left the plant in the car during their religious function. Never again. At 12:30, they exited the building to a parking lot filled with warm, spring sunlight, suspecting nothing. When they reached the car, they saw. The plant was dead. Its petals were wrinkled and brown, its stems fallen over, its leaves entirely yellow and drooping. After all the love poured onto it, the plant had been killed by a moment of thoughtless neglect.

It was a brave plant, and we do honor to its memory. We shall tell its story to our future household greenery, how its strength and joy brought light to our lives, for a little while.

1951 Chestnut St. Apt. 108

Bed

Bookshelf

Couch! And wall hanging from Hawaii, and fluffy white rug

Entertainment

Elanor's pet #1

Kitchen

Kitchen table, window

Elanor's pet #2

Walk-in closet

Mirror