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DO YOU REMEMBER the Countess de Lave in Claire Booth Luce's 1939 classic, The Women?
"L'amour, l'amour," she exclaims while drowning herself in champagne. "That's French for love."
But, what is it? L'amour, for which everything must be sacrificed. L'amour, in the name of which everything may be justified. Is it an emotion? An ineffable feeling of affection so tender that one cannot live without it? Is it an attraction? An intense desire so strong that it justifies any conduct necessary to satisfy it? Or is it a meeting of the minds, so apparent that it leads to a sense of oneness with another? The sense that, in looking into the eyes of your beloved, you are in essence looking into a mirror, allowing you to know yourself?
Whenever I hear someone say that the past is dead, I ask myself, what if everything is happening all at once? If time is a misconception and the dividing line between past, present, and future is an illusion as postulated by Einstein, if the laws of physics are fundamentally reversible and life is nothing more than an opportunity to experience sequentially moments of existence that, in reality, are occurring simultaneously, then perhaps a memory is the chance to relive the past as present, and destiny is the knowing of what is to come because it is already here.
The older I get the more I wonder if the capacity to hold, ever-present, our memories of the past along with our instincts for the future is precisely what creates our reality. Have I changed all that much from the nineteen-year old girl who had her entire life before her? I still can see her when I look into the mirror. I still can feel everything she felt —the wonder and the thirst for more, the insecurities mixed with the knowing that she is perfect and always has been. Could it be that the ability to live in the past, present and future all at once is the gateway to knowing thyself? Could it be that, in knowing thyself, one can answer my question? "What is love?"
The ancient aphorism has been attributed to a number of Greek sages from Heraclitus to Pythagoras, Socrates to Plato. Inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, it is more likely, however, that it was merely appropriated by these men from the Egyptian proverb, "Man, know thyself, and you are going to know the gods;" or the Hindu Upanishads that, centuries before, affirmed "Enquiry into the truth of the Self is knowledge." Hinduism claims that the Self is the goal of life. But before you misconstrue those words, note that the word Self is capitalized. It is knowing this Self—this Higher Self—that is the true goal.
Pitou loved telling me that the unexamined life is not worth living. Yet, how can you hope to examine it if you believe your past is dead? Often I have thought that, in writing this memoir, this is all I am attempting to do—examine my life in order to arrive at the truth of mySelf. For if the soul is a helpless prisoner, as Plato contended, "chained hand and foot in the body, compelled to view reality not directly, but only through its prison bars," I like to believe that writing allows a panoramic assessment of oneself through the soul's all-seeing eye—the wide format lens that captures the sequentially experienced moments of one's life with horizontally elongated fields of view stretching both into the past and the future simultaneously. Attempting to view my life through this lens is my way of looking within and of turning my back on a world that, too often, would have us forget our true goal, would keep us ignorant of ourselves.
Someone once said that if ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy? Perhaps it is because ignorance serves as the fertile ground from which evil flourishes. Ignorance is a weapon that we wield against ourselves. But, if my late husband taught me one thing, it is that the remedy for ignorance is a simple one, available to anyone, irrespective of upbringing, access to formal education, or rank in the societal order. For if wisdom is the antidote to ignorance, it is conferred upon us—not by birth nor University degree—but by the safeguarding, throughout our lives, of one basic human characteristic: the propensity to question.
"Question everything," he admonished. "Question the apparent; question the unquestionable. Never stop questioning."
He had an unconventional definition of nobility. He often told me that it had nothing to do with the family you are born into—a surprising remark, given his lineage.
"If you can leave people and places as well as you found them or better," he explained, "than you are noble."
Of course, to leave a place better than you found it is a relatively simple affair; but people? Pitou left me a better person than when he found me. But not without shattering a number of illusions acquired during my youth, and not without forcing me to question everything I thought I "knew."
I thought of my schooling as the best that money could offer. He referred to the twelve-acre private estate in the middle of Holmby Hills as "the country club."
I thought of my country as the land of the free; he thought of the area from sea to shining sea as "the land of the somnambulant."
I thought of my mother as the one person I could always trust. Yet, stopping to stare straight into my eyes, he had only three words for me.
"Be careful Bérénice."
I knew that his warning was not objective—it was colored by the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his relationship with his own mother. But, even as early as 1978, I also felt that there was more to his cautionary advice than just a knee-jerk reaction to a personal memory.
There was his instinct for my destiny.
His capacity to hold ever-present his memories of his past along with his instincts for my future would usher in a reality ominously feared by my mother. And, as a result, I would slowly come to understand the reason she disliked him so much.
I have no doubt that my mother and my husband knew one another in a past life and that, in this one, they recognized each other the second they met. I took my mother for granted, never knowing who she truly was. As a child, I loved her too much to see her faults. And, as an adolescent in search of my identity, I distanced myself from her too much to see her qualities. Yet, she taught me a very important lesson: that while it is possible to know thyself, you can never, never truly know anyone else.
But you can love them.
Mom, with Dad (1947)
Tall, slender and utterly beautiful, my mother possessed the haughty disdain of Linda Darnell coupled with the aristocratic finesse of Merle Oberon. Yet, as a girl, I didn't see even that. I wanted her to be like the other moms of my parochial fifties world: dressed in Lilli Ann suits with white cotton gloves and discreetly neutral make up that blended seamlessly into my affluent Protestant surroundings. Instead, my mother arrived at our Episcopalian church on Sundays clad in solid black, her raven hair covered with a lace mantilla. The regal young widow still in her thirties, with her pale white skin, fire-red lips and charcoal painted eyes, turned every head in God's house—especially those of the married men.
She was smarter than she was intelligent; more cunning than she was creative. But she knew what she wanted from life, and she was convinced she was worth it. So, too, was my father who first laid eyes upon her in the accounting department at MGM where they both worked after the War. Growing up with only the shadow of my father to cling to, my mother spent so much time speaking to me about her undying love for him that I never doubted it for a second. And yet, today, as I sit here asking myself what love truly is, I wonder.
He was wealthy beyond her wildest dreams. Dad was also elegant and educated—a "catch" in every sense of the word. He had been formed in boarding schools—Yale, and before that, Taft, where as a member of the "Senior Eleven" selected by the student body and faculty on the basis of character, he was fondly remembered for his amusing stories written on the fly and told in the winter evenings during late night bull sessions. My love of the written word comes from him. A gifted artist and fabulous horseman, uncharacteristically with an eye for the ladies, his classmates voted him "Handsomest, Best Build, Wittiest, Biggest Line, Most Pessimistic, Worst Chimney and Last to Marry."
Yet, despite his popularity, his years in Connecticut had not been happy ones.
As a child, he resented having been shuttled off to the élite Watertown institution where one master was assigned to every ten boys, instruction in Greek and Latin was mandatory, and no one could leave campus "except to attend his father's inauguration as president of the United States." And as a Yale man in 1929, caught in the throes of the worst market crash in U.S. history, whether he wanted to be there or not, he knew that his days in New Haven were numbered. For while the poor were definitely getting poorer, suddenly, the rich were no longer getting richer.
He couldn't have been more different from Mom—the absolute proof that opposites attract. Yet, before their meeting in 1947, there had been no sign of the sophisticated New Yorker ever having demonstrated any fascination for the Latina element. While at Yale, Dad was found in the company of Anglo women who conformed to his mother's sense of East Coast propriety, the most notable of whom he would re-encounter years later at the studio. When Kenneth Stevenson Jr. first met Virginia Katherine McMath, she was not yet the star portrayed in Top Hat, sliding across the dance floor in ostrich feathers and the arms of Fred Astaire to the mellifluous supper club sounds of Irving Berlin. During the fall of 1929, the ice-cool beauty had yet to have made her first film. Still, her image of waspish perfection—a young girl the world would come to know as Ginger Rogers—was everything my paternal grandmother would have loved to see her son marry.
Instead, six months after meeting my mother, he married Ginger's antithesis.
Spying Rogers as the newlyweds meandered through the studio alleys back in the summer of 1948, Dad commented in his typical self-deprecating manner: "She wasn't all that interested in me. She spent most of her time on the phone with her mother."
I began this memoir by evoking the image of Fred Astaire sweeping across the dance floor in coattails with Ginger Rogers in his arms. It is fitting that I should end this first part of it with the vision of her in the arms of my father. My father, who through his absence in my life had more impact upon it than he ever could have had he lived.
He had bumped into Ginger a couple of times at the MGM commissary—the legendary Art Deco watering hole that could seat over two-hundred and had its own bakery in the basement. There, you could sip on soup for 20 cents a bowl or gorge on a banana split for half a buck. Rogers was filming "The Barkley's of Broadway" after replacing a suicidal Judy Garland who, during the first months of shooting, hadn't managed to get to the studio in time for crack of dawn make-up and rehearsals. While growing up, Mom spoke incessantly to me of those years spent in the sound stages and false front streets of Metro—a witness to the icons of her era.
She was critical of them.
"Lana Turner was always overweight," she'd comment cattily. "They had to lock her up and deprive her of food weeks before every film. And Hedy Lamarr! She thought nothing of going down on a guy under the linen cloth of a restaurant table."
Envious of their success, she was nonetheless wary of the price they had paid for it. But that was Mom: sensible– while wondering if she should be.
There is nothing more difficult than writing about your mother. For me, it's like writing about the three faces of Eve. My mother was never one person. She was one person to the world—one person to the rest of my family—and multiple persons to me. Like a multi-faceted diamond with flaws, her sharp edges were capable of dazzling to the point of blinding you—or shredding you to bits. Perhaps it was the light I placed her in, but I saw my mother as no one else did.
"Kennnny!" she'd laugh, while miming Ginger's excitement over crossing paths with her ex-beau. Making the star appear as ridiculous as possible, my mother's voice would reach shrill extremes as she mimicked the drawn-out intonation given by Rogers to my father's knick name.
"That's how she'd talk to him," Mom continued. "She was effusive! She'd see him in the commissary and gush all over him, while giving me the eye. You know, that eye that runs from head to toe, that eye that says, 'What's he doing with her?'"
I must have heard the story a hundred times and, after about the tenth, concluded that it wasn't Ginger who was wondering what my Dad was doing with Mom. It was my mother who was wondering.
Despite her beauty, her impoverished childhood had left her deeply insecure. She didn't fit in my father's moneyed world. Yet, she had seen what poverty had done to her mother, and was determined not to experience the same fate. When I was born, Mom didn't think twice about which grandmother to name me after; only the wealthy one would do. She looked at the gesture as insurance. Ironically, it was a policy that would backfire in her face.
Fear, more than any other condition, served as my mother's guidepost to life. And, as I would mature and come to realize this fact, I asked myself: when we are governed by fear, is it possible to love? Perhaps not. But I do believe that it is the attempt to conquer the one that can push us toward the other.
It wouldn't be until the end of the eighties that I would face such a challenge. By then, my mother's fears, as well as my own, would finish by ripping the two of us apart. The eighties marshaled a period of personal transformation in sharp contrast to the Galatean makeover I experienced throughout the seventies. The Cinderella years were coming to an end.
Our house in Brentwood had been rented to John Lodge, the bass guitarist and vocalist for the Moody Blues. The lease would be up in the Fall of 1979. Deep inside of me, I knew that my days in France were coming to an end. Each time Pitou and I had left California, it had been with a heavy heart. The land he had once disdainfully referred to as "Tahiti" had grown on him. The easy life style, warm climate, and sun drenched beaches had offered a respite from the constant grind of Paris. California was beckoning; he was happy there.
This Frenchman, whom I had prayed to as a fourteen-year-old, whom I had begged to appear in my life, to extricate me from the tedium of my West Coast existence, was showing signs of succumbing to a mode of living I had thought I had left forever. Years later when I would speak of the irony that I should bring my rescuer to the very place from which I had been rescued, Pitou just smiled.
"Mais, mon chou," he remarked. "Don't you know? The Blue Bird of Happiness can always be found in your backyard."
The Blue Bird of Happiness. With all that has been laid at my feet, why am I constantly looking for her elsewhere?
Of course, had I not been in search of her, I would have never found Pitou. And as I contemplated the return to my roots, I worried about uprooting his. But we had another reason for leaving Paris—a two-year-old whom we both yearned to raise naked and free on the beaches of Southern California.
She was gorgeously chubby, with rosy round cheeks framed by golden locks of blonde hair. She was also all consuming—demanding—the kind of child who would cry all night to monopolize your attention, never giving up until she literally dropped in her crib from fatigue. Like my mother, she knew what she wanted. In her case, it was the undivided, complete and total attention of her parents. Observing her, I thought often of my father, of his antipathy toward his mother for not having consecrated her total attention to him during his childhood. Devon Berenice Thoreau de la Salle was not one to be ignored. And, by the time she was walking, she had already made that fact crystal clear to the both of us.
Her adorable baby smile was deceiving. Behind it laid the focus of an eagle. Peering at me, from the earliest age, her eyes registered her rate of disapproval.
"She won't let me pick her up," I commented to her father as she purposefully ignored me one evening after her nightly bath—punishment for having spent my day away from her at Merrill.
And yet, she was tender, endearing. I remember sitting with her in my lap with a cookie in my hand. Giving it to her, she took a bite only to watch as I snatched it from her fat little fingers. As I ate the whole thing, she gave me a startled look before laughing, confident that the world is abundant, that she didn't have to fight for what was rightfully hers.
"How do I keep her this way?" I thought. "How do I protect her from the groveling that, inevitably, seems our due?"
I pulled out another cookie from the box on the kitchen table. Waving it in front of her, I asked, "Can I have a bite?" She giggled before shoving it into my mouth and waited to see the expression of pleasure that it brought to my face.
What do I want to keep with me when I find myself letting go of life? This innocence she possessed, this fearlessness, this confidence in Good. I realized that she had more to teach me than anyone I had encountered while searching for success. That night, at dinner, I spoke to Pierre about leaving Merrill Lynch.
"But, what will you do?" he asked. "You're not one to waste the day lunching with the girls. I know the baby is a handful. But if you don't have a goal of some sort, you'll go crazy."
"I don't want her raised by strangers," I answered. "I don't want her thinking that we didn't have time for her."
He paused for a second before taking a swig from the glass of Johnnie Walker Red he had brought with him to the dinner table that evening. Grimacing as the cold liquid ran down his throat, he stared at me.
"You mean, the way Georgia thinks of me," Pitou said.
My fork dropped, making a loud clanking noise against the Wedgewood plate. Picking it up, I regained my composure before answering him.
"I want her to be proud of us as parents, Pitou. I want her to grow up knowing that she's loved. I don't need to work in an office for others when we can work together while having her by our side. The real estate market in California is booming. With your taste, we can easily renovate properties for a living. "
Suddenly, he smiled. It had been years since he had left Régie Press Publicis as the Chef de la Publicité Littéraire. Yet the thought of another nine to five job in an office in Paris had proven too much for him. The creative possibilities of working outdoors in the California sun while renovating property lit up Pitou's face.
"Okay," he said.
When he was truly happy about a decision we made, he had a way of saying "okay." It was chipper, like a small bird singing. His blue eyes would light up, becoming a crystal turquoise, as if he had flipped the switch to an incandescent light behind them.
"Besides, I don't want to raise Devon in Paris," he continued. "I'm tired of this city. I'm tired of the noise and the traffic. I'm tired of the cost and, above all, I'm tired of its expectations."
I knew what, secretly, he wanted: to re-discover the carefree existence that, ironically, he had experienced growing up in the South of France during the War—the best of times and the worst of times when he had been able to live from day-to-day content with the simple pleasures life offers: a stroll on the beach at sunset with bare feet in the sand, the sound of sea gulls and laughing children, the warm breeze of summer in your hair. It took very little to make Pitou happy. I sometimes think that is why he was given so much.
For the next few months we planned our departure from Paris while spending our weekends at the country homes of friends. Back then, Arielle Dombasle, a diva in every sense of the word, was still an unknown—some five years away from becoming a vedette with her breakthrough performance in Éric Rohmer's Pauline à la Plage. Although we couldn't be more different, the parallels we share have preoccupied me on more than one occasion. Her childhood was troubled by the early death of her mother, an event which affected her with every bit of the force that the death of my father had upon me. Faced with her father's infidelities, a man described by Arielle as "extraordinairement beau. . . comme un dieu," she says that she watched her mother "die from love" while abandoning Arielle at the age of eleven to deal with the consequences. How does one die from love you ask? Arielle will tell you that her mother was "a slave" to her love for her husband and that it led the woman to the unthinkable: to allowing the mistress of Arielle's father, "une femme remarquable mais très écrasante," [1]to live under the same roof with them.
Pitou, with Arielle
Me, the same day
Our parents create the road maps for our lives without ever realizing it. Faced with the disturbing consequences of her father's decision, and her mother's acquiescence, Arielle's attitude toward love was predictable.
"I decided to live for my mother, to avenge her life," she told Mireille Dumas in a 2008 television interview for Vie Privée, Vie Publique, exposing a "secret" that she had spoken of to me, freely, before touched by stardom.
Of course, we never end by avenging injustices wrought upon us; instead we finish by affirming our state of victimhood. By wallowing in our pain, we bring clarity and focus to it, attracting the very condition we seek to eradicate from our lives. It is perhaps because of this that Arielle's life long battle with her father has fascinated me. That, and the fact that we both chose to vanquish the injustices inflicted upon us by our fathers by marrying men who reminded us of them.
It has been seventeen years since I last saw Arielle, but it really doesn't matter if I ever see her again.
"Dans la vie, on commence en se voyant un peu," Pitou would remind me, "puis beaucoup, puis plus de tout." [2]
By watching Arielle from afar, however, by observing the life of this old friend, this lost friend, a friend who has grown in an opposite direction from mine, I have come to understand the aspects of myself that have most troubled me. Like Arielle, my obsession with my father would determine my destiny. Like Arielle, it would teach me the meaning of love.
She was born Arielle Sonnery de Fromental, and has been characterized as everything from l'éternelle petite fille to a "psycho senior" –a national treasure "more French than the Eiffel Tower" for whom all the world is but a stage. Yet, she hails from Connecticut and was raised in Mexico—the daughter of an ambassador of aristocratic French lineage and an intellectual who surrounded Arielle in her youth with the notable literati of his era. Taking her maternal grandmother's name in memory of her mother, I can't help but wonder if, in so doing, she was also attempting to eradicate her father whom she describes as "seigneur, méchant homme, égoïste, mais en même temps, très intéressant."[3]
Early in life, she privately announced her decision to become a femme fatale, "le contraire de ce qui était ma mère." [4] Today she is public about that decision.
"I would be the woman who would annihilate men," she says when asked about the resolutions she made in the formative years of childhood. "I would make them suffer; I would be a sort of unobtainable woman for whom they would die. It wouldn't be me who would die for them."
It is easy to see why she made up her mind to adopt the life of a seductress. Growing up, she had two images of women upon which to model herself. Her mother, who was the image of douceur, la charme, "who dies and who is, thus, vanquished;" and then the other image, of her father's mistress, dominatrices, an Aztec princess—a warrior.
"I asked myself: what should one be in life? Should one be a victim? Because it is also a temptation, and sometimes we let ourselves be devoured."
These tidbits of truth she so readily metes out seem uncharacteristically profound. And that is what makes her so interesting—an enigmatic starlet, derided by many while loved by most. Yet still a teen, she flew to Paris to set about conquering the one species of man who appeared to her to be unconquerable: the playboy. And, by the time I came to know her in 1974, she had succeeded in capturing the undivided attention of one of the city's most notorious womanizers.
With Paul and Arielle, 1978
Paul Albou was a man whose reputation in Paris was anything but stellar. In fact, there were a number of well-intentioned society matrons who warned me about frequenting this man's company. I was told on more than one occasion to be careful about being seen in his presence. Described by Vanity Fair as "a Jewish playboy society dentist" 32 years Arielle's senior, I had first met Paul in 1971 while seated by the dance floor at Castel's where he hadn't hesitated to make his feelings about me known, irrespective of the fact that I was with a friend of his: Pitou.
"Wow!" Paul exclaimed while staring intently into my eyes.
Leaning over the table, he took my hand to kiss it while keeping me in his line of sight. Nor did it seem to bother him that he, too, was in the company of another—a young and beautiful French girl who seemed visibly annoyed by her date's ploy of seduction.
Arielle's eventual marriage to this Algerian Casanova would stay a secret for decades to all but a handful of Paul's friends, of whom Pitou was one. Yet, word of his reputation must have traveled to Mexico, for when Arielle's father heard of the nuptials, he refused to have anything further to do with her.
"He was the first man of my life," she would explain some forty years after having married him. "He was also a man who had the most beautiful women in the world in his arms."
It is true that, in the sixties and seventies, Paul had been seen about town in the presence of sirens like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda, Raquel Welch and Jean Shrimpton, as well as a bevy of other fashion models regularly seen in the pages of ELLE and Marie-Claire. As if to tame her unfaithful father, Arielle took him on—a challenge to be conquered, a man with a frame of mind to be dominated. It couldn't last. Paul failed to meet the first criteria for being considered one of Europe's true playboys; for while he had the chutzpah, he possessed neither the money nor the required affinity for risk. You'd never see Paul on the back of a Polo pony or weaving a Ferrari through the streets of Monaco. And, unlike Porfirio Rubirosa, Fon de Portago and Gunter Sachs, he didn't have the connections—the carte blanche to the world of the affluent and the elegant. Rather, Paul resided on the outskirts of society, the edges of le Tout-Paris where he remained marginalized, albeit, in one of the most spectacular apartments in the city—one he couldn't afford.
It was situated on the rue de Tilsitt, one of two streets that form a circle around the Place de l'Étoile, the other being the rue de Presbourg. On the first floor of one of les Hȏtels Mareschal overlooking l'Arc de Triomphe, Arielle would later characterize the apartment as "so enormous, we had to burn the furniture in winter to keep it warm." My memory of the place, however, was that its heating bills were paid by Bernie Cornfeld–the con man of the seventies and Madoff of his era who, before its fall, built the mutual fund sales company, Investors' Overseas Services, into a two and a half billion dollar empire. Paul and Cornfeld were good friends and, as a result, Bernie had an entire wing of the apartment as his personal pied-a-terre while in Paris. Besides, it was a sparsely furnished place, and even if Paul had burned the furnishings they would have scarcely kept Arielle warm for a week.
Man about Town, Paul Albou
Paul was always on the prowl, for the next combine.[5] God only knows what he engaged in with Cornfeld. There were rumors.
"He has always needed to resort to trickery," Pitou told me early on in our relationship, "to call attention to himself, to get whatever it is that he wants."
It was a phenomenon completely foreign to Pitou. Attention had always fallen to him effortlessly, the natural consequence of having been born possessing grace. Paul, however, had to work at attracting attention. But then, a person's faults can just as easily entice. Pitou was leery of Paul. With reason.
This was the man whom Corinne Buchet had purposefully omitted from her list, the womanizer known for slipping Quaaludes into the champagne flutes of unsuspecting young girls; whose dinner invitation I had accepted in the early days of my courtship with Pitou and who had caused his eyes to burn with fire as he sat astonished—perplexed by my lack of judgment.
"Give me an example," I asked, "of calling attention to himself, I mean."
"Do you remember when we were pool-side at l'Hôtel du Cap last summer? And Paul was standing at the top railing, overlooking the cliffs while gazing out to sea?"
The image of the trim, tanned figure in a white Lacoste shirt, his thick dark hair perfectly combed, had stuck vividly in my memory.
"Yes," I said. " I remember. He was under the loud-speaker. He was called to the phone several times that day."
In fact, it had been the voice of the hotel operator paging Paul that had alerted us to his presence at Eden Roc where, sunning on the raft off of the cliffs, we had spent a hot August afternoon.
"He was waiting for his secretary to call him," Pitou continued. "She was under instruction to do so at the lunch hour, to make sure that he was paged when the restaurant was packed."
To be paged over the loud-speaker at Eden Roc, one would have to convince the management that there was an emergency of sorts; small feat for the assistant to a doctor—even if he was only a dentist.
"It's Paul's way of announcing himself," Pitou remarked, "of saying to the world 'I'm here.' "
And yet in spite of his unrefined machinations, Pitou liked the man. He seemed to understand him, his need to count, and his willingness to go to extremes in order to meet the need.
"I was his Lolita," Arielle would later say of him. "He adored me."
Knowing Paul, of that I had no doubt.
One of my most vivid memories of Arielle is of a day in Paris when we spent the afternoon at a private spa where, completely naked, we took a sauna together. Besides the fact that she was utterly spectacular, there is something about the condition of nakedness between two women that brings their most intimate revelations to the fore. Before long, as the sweat trickled down our legs, we were speaking of our husbands, and of sex. She wanted to know what it was like to be in bed with Pierre. Almost as if conducting a survey, her curiosity was aimed at provoking my most personal and explicit confessions. What were his techniques? Was he attentive to my desires? How often did we engage in making love? Pitou was a very attentive lover and I wasn't shy about candidly answering her questions. But she shocked me when my turn arrived to inquire into her sex life with Paul.
"I never initiate it," she confessed. "If we make love, it's because he wants to. It has to be that way –when the man wants to—don't you think?"
These were her pre-B.H.L. years, the days before her love affair with France's celebrity philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy, a man who has acquired intellectual gravitas by speaking up everywhere about everything all the time and, in the process, demonstrating a belief in a thought expressed by Oscar Wilde: "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."
Arielle would divorce Paul in the mid-eighties, an event from which I think he never recovered. Instead, he succumbed to the temptation of being devoured while she went in search of her next victim. I doubt that she believes that she was ever in love with this man, although she certainly loved him. In her quest to vanquish the ghost of her father, he was a necessary first step.
Her marriage to BHL would have made Oscar Wilde red with envy. Mockingly referred to as "The Genius of Judaism," a title owing to Chateaubriand's "The Genius of Christianity," with Arielle at his side, he would become the most talked about writer in Paris, feeding the tabloids for decades. Like Albou, an Algerian-born Jew, he first became noticed in the early 1970s as one of the Nouveaux Philosophes who repudiated Marxism. Unlike Paul, his adoration for Arielle would come without the loss of his strident independence. And, in the end, the woman men would die for, the femme fatale who used all of her cunning to defy their control, bizarrely became Bernard Henri's submissive pet. As if corseted, destined to stay attached to his puppet strings, she justifies the contradiction by stating simply:
"Moi j'aime être une femme soumise; ça me plait. Parce que c'est voluptueux." [6]
Are all women condemned to eventually become their mothers? In attempting to avoid their fates do we, unwittingly, take them on?
In Daphne Guinness, Arielle would meet her Aztec princess: BHL's exotic mistress and the woman who would remind her that we can never change the fundamental nature of the men we choose to love. The heir to the 18th century Irish brewer, granddaughter of Diana Mitford, and iconic fashion trend setter whom Levy claims "is no longer a person but a concept," it would seem that her purpose is to taunt Arielle, just as her mother before her was taunted by her own goddess of Rhamnous–the nemesis from whom there is no escape.
"Love is a sort of madness," she sings. "Your fatal flaw, your imagination. No imagination . . . Love is forgiveness. In the end, in the end . . . love is forgiveness."
As I watch her, I think to myself that, perhaps most importantly, love provides all of us with a stage upon which to act out the trauma of our childhood. If so, then it is not the feelings love engenders that matter as much as the lessons it can teach.
With August upon us, the heat of the city became unbearable. Gérard Bonnet had recently sold his chalet in Verbier for a villa in Marbella. We ditched Paris to spend a week with him on the Costa del Sol. Now divorced from Lorraine, he had married a woman some twenty years younger who Pitou quickly tagged as la coule douce—the soft flow. She had come to know Gérard in the early seventies as a guest at the chalet. Pitou loved Marica. She had a mellow quality to her. Svelte, with brown hair and eyes like melted chocolate, she sauntered through life with the grace of a gazelle, bestowing kindness upon those whom she met by simply agreeing to be in their presence.
Sometimes I think that I have chosen everyone whom I have met in this lifetime for the lessons they could teach me. Marica taught me an important one. Gérard's divorce from Lorraine was complicated by the fact that she was still very much in love with her husband. Yet Marica would end up becoming one of her closest friends. Refusing to allow her married life to become a cliché, she rejected the stereotypical image of the hateful ex-wife and, instead, set about winning over Lorraine.
My definition of destiny is life conforming to purpose and I believe that Marica's was to help those who touched her look past appearances in a quest for the possible.
She brought quiet grace to Gérard's new home as well as to his life.
Like the chalet Helora before it, the house in Marbella was populated with jet-setting characters, one of whom has actually been credited with coining the term. Igor Cassini, younger brother of fashion designer Oleg, arrived one evening with his fifth wife, Brenda, then seven months pregnant with their first child. Known under the pseudonym of Cholly Knickerbocker, the eminent columnist for the Hearst newspapers during the 1940s and 1950s spent the evening doing what he did best: entertaining us with society gossip.
Gérard had come to know him in the Fifties as a result of his close friendship with Rubirosa. But the world would come to remember him as a result of his picking Jacqueline Bouvier as 1947's debutante of the year. Three decades later as we dined with Cassini, her image tarnished by the tabloids, it was difficult to think back on Jackie as that upper-class young woman making her first formal appearance in fashionable society. Her marriage to Onassis had so shattered her carefully constructed myth of Camelot that she was barely remembered as a Kennedy. Instead, as "Jackie O," snide remarks circulated as to the nickname's true meaning. Did the O refer to Onassis? Or to the string of zeroes he had contributed to her bank account? Did JFK ever really listen to Camelot before going to bed at night? Or was that last line of the reprise just too good to let go to waste.
"I felt like I was buying a prize horse," Ari told syndicated columnist, Jack Anderson, as he recounted to him the terms of the pre-nuptial agreement Ted Kennedy had negotiated with Onassis on Jackie's behalf. Yet another example of love providing the platform upon which to work through childhood trauma.
"L'amour, l'amour . . ." stronger than death and yet like La Rochefoucauld's ghosts that everyone talks about and few have seen.
Caught between the vise of her father's lack of money and his incessant need of it, Jackie spent her youth auditioning a succession of affluent eligible bachelors in a mercenary search for the right, rich husband. In Ari, she had finally found him. But even one of the richest men in the world couldn't erase the scars from her youth. While squirreling away her two million plus pre-nup proceeds and her $30,000 monthly expense account, she still felt the need to sell the clothes from her notorious shopping sprees, never wearing the garments, instead choosing to pocket the profits that came from her mere ownership of them.
Once again, I found myself watching from afar a woman who had briefly touched me personally while pondering the profound importance of the paternal figure and wondering: is a girl's father the only man who has any real influence upon her? Black Jack Bouvier had the kind of influence upon Jackie that another man, well versed in the trade of beautiful things for profit, was surprised he had to explain to me.
Upon our return from Marbella, I was invited by Alain Boucheron to view a new shipment of diamonds. In the late seventies, the House of Boucheron was still a family owned business. Situated on the Place Vendôme at number 26, it has been a favorite jeweler of maharajas and queens for over one-hundred and fifty years. I had been introduced to the great-grandson of the house's founder by a client of mine at Merrill who had known him since childhood. Alain wasn't yet thirty but, already, he shared the stern presence of his great-grandfather, Frédéric, as well as his receding hairline. I expected to be received by the joaillier in a ground floor salon where, surrounded by mahogany walls and dominated by crystal chandeliers, a few stones would be discreetly viewed from within glass encased display tables. Instead, Alain greeted me with a kiss on both checks as he led me to a side elevator.
"I'm taking you to the vaults," he said.
I don't remember how many floors we descended, but when the elevator doors opened, I had the impression of being deep in the bowels of the Place Vendôme. The room was richly carpeted yet dimly lit. And, rather than viewing the rare stones from under glass, Alain poured the diamonds from velvet pouches into my bare hands. It is a rare experience to hold millions of dollars between your fingertips—to let them slither through your extremities and watch the flawless jewels as they fall on felt pads the color of royal blue. Alain smiled as he observed me. It gave him pleasure to see the warm reaction of a young woman to their cold touch.
He was a bavard, a man who loved to chat with woman—as if understanding what makes them tick could help him in his inherited profession. He wanted to know all about my vacation and everyone I had seen on the Costa del Sol.
"I really don't understand the attraction," I commented. "To Marbella, I mean. There are so many other places in the world that are far more beautiful. Why is it so popular?"
Alain looked at me surprised before employing my misconstrued term in its correct sense.
"Marbella is anything but 'popular,' Bérénice. To the contrary, it is the opposite of popular. It is where the rich congregate. And, above all, the rich love being in the presence of the rich."
In that moment I felt extremely foolish, while coming to understand what it means to be in a world but not of it.
That fall, as Pitou and I prepared for our new life in California, we leased our apartment to the ambassador of Italy for the OECD. I remember thinking he didn't deserve it. He was the kind of man who rubbed his hands in anticipation of their receiving remuneration, a less than elegant bureaucrat with a conniving smile and a frumpy wife. His suits were badly tailored and the soles of his shoes were too thick. In the cool chic backdrop created by Alain Demachy, he didn't fit. But he benefited from the unlimited bank account of the Italian government, and he quickly agreed to the ridiculously large security deposit that Pitou demanded of him.
We spent that Christmas in the little town of Detilly in Touraine at Demachy's manoir, retreating into a sixteenth century existence of mornings that began by stoking fires in the hearths, afternoons of long walks along abandoned country roads dotted with village houses of white stone and slate roofs, and evenings in the kitchen where, as I cooked, Pitou uncorked bottles of Chenin Blanc and Gamay while entertaining me with his endlessly interesting thoughts.
The house was not far from Chinon, the town where the Knights Templar were imprisoned and Joan of Arc had acknowledged her king; from Blois, where the duc de Guise was murdered; from Chenonceau, where Henri II had housed his mistress, the lovely and intelligent Diane de Poitiers; and from Amboise, where François I had welcomed Leonardo da Vinci. For the entire month, to an interior backdrop of refined haute luxe and Neo-Gothic architectural details, where all sorts of styles were comfortably mixed, we did nothing more than give over to the simple pleasures of life. Reading and talking and playing with Devon, our weeks spent in the garden of France, the land of Gargantua and Pantagruel, eased our transition from the fast paced life of the city we were leaving to the slow suburban roll that awaited us in California.
On the morning when we left Paris for the Loire Valley, the hired help for the entire building on the rue Frédéric-Le-Play lined up outside its imposing glass and wrought iron doors to bid us farewell. It was a bit like a scene out of Downton Abbey—an emotional moment where, shaking the hands of the servants, it hit me that not only was a chapter of my life coming to a close, a way of life was ending. There were tears in the eyes of le gardien d'immeuble, an elderly man who throughout the years had knocked on the kitchen door in the mornings to see if I needed him for grocery shopping. With his hat in hand, politely he would ask if I had a list for him just before I had managed a mad dash for my office at Merrill Lynch. His niece, Babette, held Devon in her arms as I loaded a few last things into the trunk of the mini-cooper.
Devon, with Babette
"Come on, Devon," I said to my two-year old. "It's time to get into the car."
Still upset with me for months of perceived neglect, she feigned disinterest while clinging to Babette's neck.
"Bon, okay," I said as I moved toward the shotgun door of the car.
Thinking I might leave her behind, suddenly, the little girl sprung out of Babette's arms and jumped into the back seat of the mini. Gazing out the rear window, she waved to the servants while gleefully squealing:
"Bye, bye! Bye, bye!"
Then, heaving a sigh of relief, she giggled nervously as they all waved back to her.
As I closed the door of the car, I glanced at her father who was turning the key to the ignition.
"Ah, oui " he whispered. "I told you that she knows where she belongs."
After two months in the Loire Valley, we drove to Meribel where Pierre had rented a chalet for the season. The winter of 1979 was the happiest of my life–a blue sky holiday. The chalet was perpetually filled with guests and when it wasn't, we would ski to neighboring Courchevel where we spent time with Jean and Anne Caracciolo. Living in the French Alps was so magnificent that, years later, when Pierre would suggest that we move to Mammoth Lakes, I would instantly agree. Waking up each morning, my only worry was of what to serve our friends for dinner that night. More often than not, they wouldn't let me cook. Relieved of my role as hostess, I would collapse in front of the television set, exhausted after eight hours of skiing Les Trois Vallées.
With the rumble of friends' laughter and Devon's gleeful chatter in the distance , I sat mesmerized by the black and white images of the Ayatollah Khomeini and his triumphant return to Iran after fifteen years in exile. The shah and his family had fled the country two weeks before, and jubilant Iranian revolutionaries were clamoring to establish a theocracy based upon strict adherence to Islamic fundamentalist law. Each night, I watched in disbelief as a revolution caught fire, sending women back hundreds of years into the dark ages. I was young. I still had no understanding of the underlying causes– no knowledge of the coup orchestrated by the CIA in 1953 in order to overthrow Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. That winter, as I contemplated my country's unquenchable quest for oil, I began the second phase of an awakening. Unfettered by the demand to perform at Merrill Lynch, with time on my hands, my interest shifted– from the mechanics of money to the mechanics of power.
Meribel, February 1979 (shot by Pitou)
But Pitou never let me dwell too long on the negative. He was acutely aware of my penchant to retreat into a cerebral world where, often, I would lose myself. Pulling me from the depths of darkness into the light, with his smile, his inimitable sense of humor, he would remind me of all I had been given while imploring me not to take it for granted.
We were a family now. And, while the trials of the near future would test our resolve, for the moment, adherence to the vows I had taken back in August of 1976 when we had married had yet to probe the depths of my courage and devotion to this man. As the Cinderella years came to an end, I didn't yet have the faintest clue of what real love is. Looking back, while these years were glorious and, if given the chance, I would relive them in an instant, I am the most thankful for the pain that was still to come. L'amour, l'amour –what it still had to teach.
By the time we would board the plane for L.A., Pitou and I had been together for almost eight years, defying those who had felt that, because of our age difference and cultural dissimilarities, we wouldn't last. Instead, our admiration for each other had only deepened.
"Why do I love him?" I whispered to myself under my breath as I watched him teaching our toddler how to ski.
Other than the physical attraction, the chemical reaction that ignites an incendiary wave of irrational emotions which invariably die out, I have come to define love as mutual respect born of abiding affinities, so strong, they virtually tie you to another for eternity. You are bound together because in viewing one another, you see yourself—or at least a part of yourself. In that sense, love is narcissistic although few of us would like to admit it. We want to idealize it, pretend that we are sacrificing for it when, in reality, everything that we give to it is a taking. Those in love, even when unrequited, are the lucky ones. For the bittersweet sadness experienced from the loss of love is still preferable to the hunger from never having known its taste.
My father charted my course in life without ever realizing it while my mother navigated the wake he left behind as best she could. As an adolescent who grew up amidst the wealthiest families in L.A., le Tout-Hollywood if you will, I witnessed a world that had nonetheless remained just beyond my reach—as if membership to this club had been denied me due to the missing element of my existence that had differentiated me from the pack, always leaving me with the uneasy sensation that I was not good enough, that I did not belong. Was it a coincidence that I had chosen to fall in love with a man who had been married to "the most beautiful woman in the world"? that he could open the doors to a scintillating society whose access is, more often than not, determined by the family one is born into and the social position of its paternal figure?
Much like Arielle, drawn to men whose love appears unobtainable so that she can prove to herself that she will not be made their victims, I drifted into Pitou's arms to prove to myself that I merited them.
Looking back on those early years, with the 20/20 hindsight of a woman now in her sixties, I see where I took from Pitou, all the while thinking I was giving. I see why he stressed to me that the unexamined life is not worth living; that in failing to look as objectively as possible at my past I might miss the point of experiencing it. I was drawn to him, not simply for his wit and elegance, his charm and good looks, but because in filling the void left by my father's death, he gave me the opportunity for absolution. He forever released the child in me from the notion that she was less than perfect, that she merited being abandoned—that her destiny was to be left bereft.
During the next three decades I would be showered with difficulties. The years ahead would leave memories unlike those of the twenty-something girl who lived the decade of the seventies in Paris. They would be filled with upheaval, challenges, great pain and great joy. But, by standing by me, Pitou would solidify himself as my rock, my safe haven in a sea of change that, at times, would leave me reeling in confusion and self-doubt.
The life that I had lived up until our departure from Paris that morning had been a fairy tale. Yet, if my time with Pitou had ended at that point in our forty-year love affair, it would have been for naught. For I was still living its myth, the one I had spun to better tackle the void that my father had left when he died.
Thomas Aquinas said that it is the things we love that tell us what we are. But I believe that it is the people whom we love that tell us who we are. It is the people whom we love that allow us to know ourselves. It doesn't happen right away. I don't believe in love at first sight. And, when I speak of love, I am not talking about the affairs that, inevitably, end in disappointment. In my opinion, Ricardo Montalban got it right when he said that love is "an ever-growing process; it develops after you've gone through many ups and downs, when you've suffered together, cried together, laughed together."
When that happens and you're still together, when the ego has been sacrificed to a relationship in which the two of you have become one, when you can repeat to your beloved the words of William Blake that "I am in you and you in me," then you will begin to know the meaning of love.
In thinking about how this happened to me, I can only say that some men command us to love them.
Pitou was such a man.
Marbella, Summer (1978)
End of Part One of Pitou My Love
Memoir of a Twenty-Something Girl in Paris—The Cinderella Years.
Stay Tuned for Part II:
The Malibu Years
To be Posted Soon!
ARE YOU NEW TO THE SITE ?
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[1] A remarkable woman who was, at the same time, crushing.
[2] "In life, we start by seeing our friends a little; then a lot; then not at all."
[3] ". . . seigneur, cruel man, selfish, but at the same time, very interesting."
[4] ". . . a femme fatale, the opposite of what my mother was."
[5] In French, combine means trick or ploy.
[6] Personally, I like being a submissive woman. It pleases me. Because it's voluptuous."
Posted 4 years ago by Bérénice de la Salle.
"How We Doin?"
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Becker County er et county i Minnesota i USA. År 2000 havde Becker County 30.000 indbyggere. Det administrative centrum (county seat) er Detroit Lakes.

Becker County har et areal på 1.743 km², hvoraf 349 km² er vand.

Naboamter
Becker County grænser til:
 Mahnomen County – mod nord
 Clearwater County – mod nordøst
 Hubbard County – mod nordøst
 Wadena County – mod sydøst
 Otter Tail County – mod syd
 Clay County – mod vest
 Norman County – mod nordvest

Counties i Minnesota

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text:
Moderated Forums
Orthodox-Other Christian Discussion
Orthodox-Protestant Discussion
Are you annoyed by evangelists?
Thread starter GammaRay
High Elder
Oxford, England and York, England
mathetes said:
GammaRay said:
When a Protestant declines to hear from a saint, maybe you should appeal to Proverbs 18:13, which declares it foolish and shameful to answer or reject what we haven't heard. You might also want to cite a Bible passage that concurs with the saints' words you'd like considered, and you might remind your Protestant friends that John Calvin himself quoted St. Augustine.
Oh, that's nice. By the way, the fact that some people act as Calvinists doesn't mean that they surely know about Calvin. It might be just their interpretation that leads them to believe in predestination.
GammaRay, you and Liz write as though you could read people's minds and predict their response. Have you forgotten that Jesus, who "knew what was in man" (John 2:25), came to His own even though He knew they wouldn't receive Him (John 1:11). If we're supposed to be Christ-like, how could it be orthodox for any of us not to patiently witness as our Savior did?
You're quite right. It's unChristian for us to judge people like this. I just need more patience with Evangelicals - I have had some fairly nasty experiences with people around where I am, but of course that's to do with individuals and I shouldn't judge other members of the same groups on that basis.
Jesus taught, "If anyone wills to do [God's] will, he shall know concerning the doctrine whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority" (John 7:17 NKJV). This could help people realize the importance of relying on a holy person for guidance and instruction.
They just believe that the Saints are misled and only the Scripture holdsthe truth. See, fastings, prayers, almsgiving and their rest righteous deeds do not count for them, since the Scripture is above everything.
Again, you're assuming what none of us can know--the response an evangelical or protestant will give. Mind you, I'm not saying we shouldn't stop unfruitful conversations (Titus 3:10-11). We should, though, "be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15 NKJV). By the way, the Orthodox Study Bible counts 1 Peter 3:15 as "a challenge to all--clergy and laity alike--to answer when asked about our hope in Christ with meekness and fear."
Btw, a Saint who said he did not fear God any longer, might perhaps simply have a more complete and scrupulous insight into his own faults - knowing that you deserve judgement can remove fear. I don't see it as being an arrogant statement.
antiderivative
I just came across this thread, and having recently come across an article, I've decided to use this thread to vent my frustration on a certain website (sorry, I can't help it). Seeing that I have not found an Orthodox response to some of the blatant errors on this website, I've decided to share it:
http://www.bereanbeacon.org/articles/The_Influential_Nature_of_Orthodoxy_Endangers_Christians.pdf
For example this is one of things that drives me crazy! Here is a quote:
Although Orthodoxy claims its origins from the first apostles, its actual start came after the Roman Emperor Constantine in the Fourth Century A.D. founded the state church for the empire.
I think if I see one more Constantine conspiracy theory, I'll morph into the Hulk. Sorry for being ranty, but for some odd reason I feel better knowing I'm not the only Orthodox Christian who is annoyed by these bad polemics.
HandmaidenofGod
People in general can be annoying. (Myself included.) Why pick on just one group?
mathetes
CSRA
Liz, thanks for your kind responses. Because of an out-of-town business trip, I must be away from my home PC till Sept. 16. Lord willing, I'll check back then.
Super Apostolic Bros.
Am I annoyed by evangelists?
More detailed answer: My mother and her family were born and raised in the Philippines and were ministered to by American Protestant missionaries. Mother always spoke of them in the most positive light, because truly without them she (and probably I) would be worse off than we are now. I believe, having had the opportunity to meet some of them, that they worked out of a genuine fear of the Lord and a genuine love for people.
Fast Forward to March 2009
I was in an anime convention (because I am a nerd) and I saw a group of "evangelists" who were holding provocative signs such as "Turn to Jesus or Burn in Hell." It was clear to me that they were not simply interested in spreading the Gospel but breathing down the necks of "unChristian looking" people. I tried to rebuke them using Scripture but they accused me of not knowing Scripture. Those idiots.
What also annoys me is the assumption by many Protestants that Catholics and Orthodox follow a dead traditionalism that isn't genuine. I wonder then why people like Francis Beckwith or Peter Gillquist turn in their genuine faith for "dead traditionalism."
GammaRay
Super Apostolic Bros. said:
My mother and her family were born and raised in the Philippines and were ministered to by American Protestant missionaries. Mother always spoke of them in the most positive light, because truly without them she (and probably I) would be worse off than we are now. I believe, having had the opportunity to meet some of them, that they worked out of a genuine fear of the Lord and a genuine love for people.
I'm not annoyed by good people either.
Lol, I'd love to see that.
Asteriktos
Hypatos
I like watching the evangelists on TV. It's interesting to see how different people believe radically different things, sometimes even based on the same information. The only ones who annoy me are the ones that bilk people out of their money, claiming cures and miracles and blessings in exchange for "love offerings".
Alveus Lacuna
Taxiarches
Asteriktos said:
Sow that seed!
Modern day disciples of Simon the Sorcerer, though in reverse.
BTRAKAS
North Royalton, Ohio
No. It's good to have fundamental Christians articulating the Gospel to this society, which so lacks Christian spirituality, even though they do not proclaim the fullness of the faith that Orthodoxy processes.
PeterTheAleut
Basil 320 said:
How does Orthodoxy process the faith? ???
SolEX01
Toumarches
www.goarch.org
PeterTheAleut said:
Based on the context, I believe Basil intended to say possesses although he can clarify that himself.
Thank you SolEx01 for comprehending my error. What you noted was my intention to have written.
Ortho_cat
Protokentarchos
Gebre Menfes Kidus said:
Heorhij said:
I've encountered this attitude from plenty of people, ... asking me if I'm prepared to take Jesus Christ as my Personal Saviour? (Answer: No, I'm not so selfish as to pretend Christ is 'my Personal Saviour', and I suspect He is the Saviour whether I want Him to be or not).
Well said, Liz!
Well let's be careful here. While evangelicals pervert the concept of a personal relationship with Christ, the idea in itself is not unOrthodox. The point is that our relationship with Christ is not individualistic and exclusive; it is both personal and corporate, finding its expression and fulfillment in and through the Church.
I think that this exclusivity is highly emphasized today. The idea that one can "have a relationship" with Christ, the head of the body, while having little or no involvement with the rest of the body is very un-Christian indeed.
Gebre Menfes Kidus
Merarches
I used to soak up evangelical preaching and teaching on the radio. I loved to listen to R.C. Sproul, J. Vernon McGhee, Charles Stanley, Chuck Swindoll, John MacArthur, David Jeremiah, and others. When I first became Orthodox, I still listened to these people for a while. But I soon realized that I would never understand Orthodoxy unless I "de-programmed" myself from evangelical errors.
By the grace of God, I have met Orthodox friends online who have generously sent me CD's of Orthodox sermons and Liturgies. These resources have been a real blessing to me.
I think that R.C. Sproul is one fo the most intelligent of these men.
sprtslvr1973
I wonder then why people like Francis Beckwith or Peter Gillquist turn in their genuine faith for "dead traditionalism."
Don't you know that those guys could not have been Christians in the first place :
JamesR
Depends on the preacher. Some of them are genuinely faithful and honestly just ignorant of the Truth, these ones I don't really mind and they usually actually enjoy dialogue with the Orthodox. I met a guy like this at the mall once--some old veteran who was preaching. I told him about Orthodoxy and he accepted what I said. But then you have others that are ignorant out of malice, think everyone else is going to western Hell and hate anything RC/EO.
JamesR said:
To the OP: I'm annoyed by posters who resurrect threads only to say essentially nothing new. :
trevor72694
Protostrator
archiveofourown.org
Oh my--there's a lot of thread ressurrection going on in these here parts. 8)
Doubting Thomas said:
Yes, the Creed says "I look for the resurrection of the dead," not the resurrection of the thread. :laugh:
HA, HA!!!
Monk Vasyl
www.ukrainianorthodox.org
LOL, I needed a good laugh.
Eastern Mind
Ah that's awesome! :laugh:

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Due to its outstanding commitment to music education, the Lynbrook School District received the 2018 Best Communities for Music Education designation by the NAMM Foundation. This is the sixth consecutive year that the district earned this honor, joining a select 583 school districts nationwide.
The distinction is awarded each year to districts that demonstrate outstanding achievement in efforts to provide high quality music access and education to all students. This includes the hard work and dedication of teachers, administrators, parents, students and community leaders who strive to make music education part of the curriculum. With this prestigious honor, the district is recognized for leading the way with music learning opportunities as outlined in the new federal education legislation, every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
Beginning in kindergarten, students throughout the Lynbrook School District participate in comprehensive musical instruction. At the elementary level, students have the option to participate in band, orchestra and chorus programs. Junior concerts begin in third grade and progress to more elaborate performances by fourth grade and throughout the middle school years. Musical opportunities at the high school abound, with concert and marching bands, string and symphonic orchestras, concert and mixed choirs, as well as chamber orchestra, string quartets, wind and jazz ensembles, brass choir and music theory courses. In the 2017-18 school year, students earned All-State, All-County and Long Island String Festival Association musical honors and performed on prestigious stages such as Carnegie Hall. In addition, members of the Tri-M Music Honor Society use their musical talents each year to serve their community.


The Turkish "retaliation" has been immediate: Mevlut Cavusoglu, the foreign minister, has recalled to Ankara the ambassador, Husein Avni Karslioglu. And from Kenya, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has immediately warned: "This vote will have a very serious impact on relationships between Turkey and Germany," and not just because "the war on History" with Berlin risks blowing up the agreement on abolishing the visa for Turkish citizens in the E.U. in exchange for the hot spots in the immigrants' odyssey.
The text of the resolution is little more than symbolic; nonetheless the vote was attended by religious people and by representatives of the Armenian community who were holding an explicit sign: "Thank You." For the first time, the Bundesrepublik officially aligns itself with other 29 countries stigmatizing the Armenian genocide as sanctioned since 1985 by the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission and ratified two years later by the European Parliament.
The document approved Thursday explicitly uses terms that are taboo in Turkey for the massacre of more than 1 million Armenian Christians in 1915 by the Ottoman Empire, at that time allied with the Germans. Ethnic cleansing in the Caucasus, massacres without mercy, deportation of the few survivors. What was left of Armenia was annexed to the USSR at the end of World War I.
And even today Turkey admits only to "nationalist excesses" but does not accept responsibility for the first genocide in the contemporary age.
But, in the end, only two were convinced: a member who voted against and one who abstained. The "retaliation" has already sprang into action: Numan Kurtulmus, the vice-premier, has not digested a "historical error" while Yasin Aktay, the AKP's influent spokesperson, has even warned about a counter-vote by the Turkish parliament.
But in Brussels, a solution to the problem of the Balkan route is necessary; thus, the agreement with Turkey (a country considered as "safe" although it persecutes the Kurds, opposition journalists and non-Islamists) exists to absorb irregular immigrants in exchange for Syrian refugees in Europe.


Council's 2018-2028 draft Long Term Plan went out for consultation from Monday 23 April, closing Friday 25 May. In total 124 submissions were received, including one petition containing 314 signatures.
Councillors heard verbal submissions on Thursday 7 June and deliberations and decision making took place on Friday 8 June. Major changes to the draft LTP were made when Council decided not to pursue the purchase of the Holcim Assets. This project was removed from the final LTP, and the District Revitalisation and Building Rationalisation projects were changed from the original proposals. Full details of these can be found by clicking here.


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The Health Benefits of Eggs
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Medically reviewed by Susan Kerrigan, MD and Marianne Madsen
There's a lot of conflicting research floating around when it comes to the subject of eggs. At first, scientists told men and women concerned about their heart health to avoid eggs at all costs, because the high cholesterol content of the eggs could raise one's risk of heart disease and stroke. But years later, more studies were done on the matter, and scientists suddenly had a new perspective: eggs weren't as bad as we thought, they admitted, so there's really no harm in eating them.
Their conclusion didn't last forever, though. As research progressed over the years, scientists kept changing their mind on the health effects of eggs. Even today, there's no real consensus on how eggs affect the heart, but we do have a good deal of new insights on the topic. Below is what the scientific community has to say about eggs.
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Today, most researchers know that eggs have a surprising number of health benefits, far from what they thought 50, 20, or even 10 years ago. Eggs are rich in vitamins and nutrients, including lutein, zeaxanthin, and choline, all of which help the body in different ways. Besides the numerous vitamins that eggs have to offer, eggs contain high levels of protein, an essential macronutrient that helps build your muscles–one large egg can contain up to 12 grams of protein. Not only, then, are eggs good for you, but they also taste great and are a crucial ingredient in many meals.
But what about the effects of eggs on the heart? Well, it's true that they contain high levels of cholesterol. A typical egg contains around 180 mg of cholesterol, which is 62% of your recommended daily intake. And let's be real, who sits down and decides to eat only one egg? Two eggs already exceeds your daily cholesterol allowance, and that can't be good for the heart, can it?
Diarrhea: Diet
This is what researchers in the 60s and 70s got wrong. They assumed that the high cholesterol content in eggs contributed to the total cholesterol levels in the body. But today, we know something they didn't: Most of the cholesterol in our bodies doesn't actually come from foods high in cholesterol. Instead, it's produced by the liver, when we eat high amounts of saturated and trans fats. Eggs do contain some amounts of saturated fat but not enough to negatively affect the cardiovascular system.
What does this mean for you? Well, scientists today say that eating a couple of eggs a day is perfectly fine. However, if you have high cholesterol levels to begin with or suffer from heart disease, it's best to keep your egg consumption to a minimum–no more than seven eggs a week. Even these recommendations are disputed, though. Sadly, the jury is still out on the health effects of eggs, but we do know a lot more than we did in earlier days. Most researchers agree, however, that as long as you're eating a healthy diet and getting enough exercise, you can go ahead and enjoy those scrambled eggs with your breakfast.
Health Benefits of Eggs
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Pickles are often served as a complementary dish but they do provide nutritional benefits that can help improve a person's health.
Different Types of Fats: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
All fats are not equal: unsaturated fats are good for you, saturated fats should be consumed in moderation, and trans fats should be cut out from your diet.
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Nutritionists emphasize that the most important way to power your brain is to eat a lot of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grain foods.
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"Readers say iPads, 'bring your own device' policies can be effective if well thought-out ... but they cautioned against believing the iPad hype machine."
Every few years, new technologies—and the policies that go with them—make a splash in schools, and this year, Apple's iPad and "bring your own device" (BYOD) policies are all the rage in ed tech.
It's no surprise, then, that recent stories about these two ed-tech trends—"Schools see rising scores with iPads" and "'Bring your own device' catching on in schools"—should be among our most widely read stories so far this year.
Readers expressed overwhelming support for BYOD as a strategy to get mobile learning tools into the hands of more students in a cost-effective way, although some raised questions that need to be considered as schools adopt BYOD policies of their own.
As for our story "Schools see rising scores with iPads" which described the experience of a few California schools that have adopted iPads in the classroom, many readers said the iPad is a new way to engage students—but at the end of the day, it's just another tool to help students learn … and perhaps some of the hype has gone too far.
How to Implement Mobile Learning: Practical Considerations.
Mobile learning should not just be traditional e-learning on a smaller device. So what are the key considerations when planning for mobile learning? For what learning situations is mobile learning a good fit? What are the best uses of mobile learning? How can mobile learning support other types of learning in the organization?
Tom Werner, chief research officer, Brandon Hall Group, will share insights on what to think about when planning for the implementation of mobile learning.
Also available "on demand" any time 24 hours after the event.
We know that districts are being held accountable for more, and being asked to do so with less funding. As a result, districts today are looking for new ways to effectively implement technology that can engage students and boost academic achievement.
Blended learning, the teaching practice that combines both face-to-face and online learning, offers several models of instruction to engage students in and out of the classroom. It has proven highly effective in helping schools and districts address the challenges of student achievement, limited resources, and the expectations of 21st-century learners. It is also the fastest growing component of online learning.
Join us for an in-depth discussion on blended learning led by two experienced practitioners, Pam Willingham and Dorothy Hirata. Hear about the many teaching and learning objectives they are meeting through the implementation of a blended learning program. Also learn how the two districts have grown the level of adoption by their faculty over time by championing accomplishments of the program. You will also hear from John Canuel, who will briefly talk about current online learning trends and how Blackboard can help you address several of your current academic challenges.
Julia Murphy has been in touch to share with us "50 Educational Blogs Every Online University Student Should Read".
If you're studying for a degree online, it might help to know what educators know about online learning — the news, policies, processes, technology, culture and resources that are pushing online education into the future. The following 50 educational blogs you should know about as an online university student are just a smattering of all the blogs available on the Web. These particular blogs are updated, and many have been online since the advent of online learning.
Thank you for mentioning my weblog in your article.
Dennis Pierce, Editor writes, "Our top story today describes a number of ways that eSchool News readers are using iPads in their classrooms. Also, in something of a surprise, the buzz coming from an annual publishing industry trade show last week had Barnes & Noble, and not Apple, as Amazon.com's top competitor in the eBook market … and college instructor Rebecca M.R. Costello offers five tips for connecting with online students."
eSN readers discuss their experiences using the iPad with their students. Whether you think it's hot stuff or just fluff, the iPad has caught the eye of many educators. Here's a list of five ways that eSchool News readers say they're using iPads in the classroom.
Følg med i denne interessante debat mellem sociolog Mette Jensen og redaktør Timme Bisgaard Munk.
Går du i seng med din smartphone? Patter du på din Ipad? Kan folk der elsker deres mobiletefoner og laptops for alvor være til stede, når de er sammen med andre mennesker? Er du også ramt af mobilitetsmani?
This recently opened store makes it easy to entertain and educate children.
These days, entertaining children is a full time job. It's important to mix in learning and education with the fun, and that takes a healthy dose of creativity. Implementing favorite activities like arts and crafts is one great way to do that. Parents, grandparents and others are looking for a store that offers the kinds of items that children really respond to.
Thanks to one new store, shoppers now have that go-to place for children's items. Recently established by entrepreneur Kathy Tiersma, City Buys is an Internet store that provides all kinds of wonderful items that kids are sure to love. The site is available at any time of day to their customers via the web at http://www.city-buys.com.
Shoppers will find the web store to be quite easy to use. City Buys features a user-friendly interface and a helpful search function that makes the shopping experience enjoyable. Even for those people who don't have much experience with making purchases on the web, the site proves to be safe and simple.
City Buys offers their customers great deals on arts and crafts, learning and education items and toy furniture. For anyone looking to give their children some fun while also letting them show some creativity, this is a must-visit store.
Jolene, Dashe & Thomson's Social Learning Blog writes, "I've been creating blended training solutions for years that look something like this:"
My model needs a face lift.
Disruptive innovation (termed as such by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton M. Christensen) brings simplicity, accessibility, affordability, and customization to complicated, expensive, and standardized products and services. Disruptive innovation fundamentally transforms the landscape rather than merely sustain the conventional structure.
On June 1, join us for a webinar exploring the why's and how's of offering training content on the iPad.
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. EDT.
We'll begin with an interview with industry luminary Elliott Masie, chair of the Learning Consortium, where he'll share valuable insights on how the iPad has transformed learning. We'll follow this with the industry premier of Pastiche by Xyleme.
Learn how this revolutionary product allows you to leverage your existing textbook, eLearning, assessment and performance support materials to rapidly create and deploy blended learning iPad applications. If you're serious about the iPad for learning, this is a can't miss!
Elliott serves as an advisor to a wide range of government, education and non-profit groups. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Skidmore College and as a Board member of FIRST Robotics. He has served as a pro-bono advisor to the Department of Defense and on the White House Advisory Council on Expanding Learning Opportunities.
Xyleme, Inc. is the leader in standards-based learning content management solutions that enable single-source publishing of training content. Xyleme is 100% XML-based to create massive efficiencies through modularity and reuse. With Xyleme, organizations improve collaboration in content development, reduce time-to-market for customized training and minimize the cost of supporting blended learning.
Don't miss these results of two effectiveness studies conducted by an independent researcher. They found that K-3 students using DreamBox Learning's online adaptive program improved their math proficiency by 19% over 2 weeks, and 50% over 2 months.
This study focused on second grade students who volunteered to participate in a pilot implementation of the DreamBox Learning instructional product, DreamBox Learning K-2 Math. Twenty-seven second grade students participated in a study to examine the effectiveness of the DreamBox technology on mathematics learning over a two-week period. Students were given a paper-and-pencil pretest on the first day of the DreamBox after-school program. They were then given a parallel post-test on the last day of the DreamBox after-school program. The results were analyzed using a paired-sample or dependent t test and the results were found to be statistically significant with an average improvement in test scores.
This study focused on 369 students who participated in the final research phase of the product's development. These were students in pre-K through third grade who had volunteered to participate in a pilot implementation of the DreamBox instructional product, and who played at least 3 times.
Why is adaptive learning from DreamBox so effective at building math conceptual understanding and fluency?
Dr. Tim Hudson, K-12 Coordinator of Mathematics for the Parkway School District, finds DreamBox Learning so effective that he us using it in 18 schools and is seeing dramatic results.
skriver, "Vi køber billetten til flyrejsen over internettet, og i lufthavnen holder vi forbindelsen til dem derhjemme på Facebook, mail eller sms. På rejsen kan vi arbejde eller se film på computeren, og når vi er fremme bruger vi mobilen, så vi kan finde vej og ringe til dem, vi skal mødes med."
Transport og teknologi virker forstærkende på hinanden, skriver sociolog Mette Jensen i ny videnskabelig bog udkommet på Aarhus Universitetsforlag.
Denne spændende bog stiller det grundlæggende spørgsmål, hvordan den øgede mobilitet påvirker det sociale liv - og finder svarene foretaget i en kvalitativ undersøgelse med interview med 19 danskere om deres oplevelser med mobilitet.
Sociologen peger på den baggrund på, at der opstår en afhængighed af de mobile medier hos det moderne menneske på farten, og at de mobile medier samtidig skaber en livsform, hvor vi bliver inspireret til at rejse mere.
Mobiltelefonen er helt afgørende i den flydende planlægning, som det moderne mennesker hele tiden befinder sig i. Har man glemt sin telefon, er det næsten som at have fået skåret en arm af, beskriver interviewpersonerne.
»Klokketidskulturen, som ellers har været en central del af den moderne verden, er på vej ud. Aftaler holdes åbne og ændres i sidste minut,« siger Mette Jensen.
Forskeren ser en tendens til, at vi hele tiden opholder os i en overgang fra et sted til et andet, og at vi har brug for computeren og mobilerne for at kunne navigere i den virkelighed.
TutorCircle, an interesting and innovative online tutoring service was launched last week. TutorCircle offers K-12 tutoring in Science, English and Math.
Unlike existing tutoring service providers, TutorCircle takes a different approach to learning.
TutorCircle offers Online Math Tutoring, Physics Tutoring, Chemistry Tutoring, Algebra Tutoring and Calculus tutoring across K-12. Our online tutoring is done by a team of highly qualified tutors. The tutors are handpicked after a series of assessment tests besides their online teaching credentials are also evaluated. This ensures that students get the best online tutoring experience every time they log-in.
Students or parents interested in finding out more about the service can visit – http://www.tutorcircle.com.
They can sign up and start taking sessions right away.
TutorCircle offers a unique platform to make learning interesting and interactive for students. We offer Online Tutoring, Homework and Assignment Help across grades and levels.
At TutorCircle we have extensively researched online tutoring techniques and methodologies and come up with a tutoring program that is both informative and effective. Our tutoring is customized and is done employing the latest and best techniques in online teaching. We use an interactive whiteboard for our tutoring sessions where a student can draw, write and also shares notes and assignments. Using a headset the student can talk to the tutor. The best part is all our sessions are one-on-one and completely student driven.
TutorCircle has a team of highly qualified and experienced tutors. Besides excellent teaching credentials, our tutors are interested in teaching - something which gets reflected in the quality of our tutoring sessions.
Our sessions are intended to develop the love of learning in a student rather than just giving them ready made answers. We understand each students strengths and weaknesses and tailor our tutoring to help a student learn to the best of his/her abilities.


V-Day doesn't just stand for Valentine's Day, you know.
In World Wars I & II, V-Day is generally a term that was used by America and her allies to mean "Victory Day." It was a cause for celebration, to say the very least, the world over.
But I don't see why, when it comes to fixing the problems with your embarrassing smile, that the two different meanings can't work together.
It can be quite a battle to deal with the shame caused by crooked, chipped, or cracked teeth. The simple act of smiling is a fight in itself, isn't it? Because whenever you smile, you know that you're exposing all of your imperfections for everyone to see.
With Valentine's Day coming up, and fast, your fears are greater than ever before. If you've got a big date planned, you're nervous about not being able to look your best no matter what you wear or how amazing your salon-job looks.
If you don't have a date, however, then you're probably blaming yourself – and your unsightly smile – for that defeat.
You could spend the days leading up to Valentine's Day wringing your hands over what went wrong, and what you should've done, although I wouldn't recommend it. You can still seize the opportunity to turn Valentine's Day into a personal Victory Day by accepting timely, efficient cosmetic dental treatment at Nashua Area Family Dentistry.
I sincerely hope your choice is the latter one, because I can transform your rugged, oddly spaced teeth in just one afternoon appointment! It's possible thanks to a process known as chemical tooth bonding, and I'd like to let you know how it can help you achieve your own personal smile victory that your Valentine will simply not believe!
If any of those describe your smile, then you are most likely an ideal candidate for the benefits of a tooth bonding procedure. It will literally fill any gaps in your smile!
The process gets its name due to the fact that it involves bonding an artificial covering to natural teeth, covering up their imperfections and sealing them against infection.
The process is so straightforward, it can be accomplished in one sitting! This will save you time and money in the long run, and in the short term it allow you to focus on those last-minute preparations before date night.
I'll begin by examining the problem areas that need treatment. Then I'll clean them up and roughen the area, which will allow the bonding chemical itself adhere more successfully to the underlying tooth.
Then I will use a composite resin, which is a kind of special plastic material, that will form the basis of the artificial tooth covering.
Based on your input and my artistic skill, I will then sculpt the resin into the shape of an ideal tooth that will match the color and the shape of your natural teeth, allowing the new covering to blend in perfectly with the rest of your smile.
The last step involves treating the resin covering with a special light. This will cause the resin to harden and take its final form as the latest member of your family of teeth. One simple cleaning later, and your new smile is ready for victory on V-Day!
A chemically bonded tooth that previously suffered from cracking or chipping not only looks more attractive, but it can help block harmful, tooth-destroying bacteria from getting inside your tooth and wreaking havoc from the inside.
All that's left to do is making the appointment to get this treatment in time. Otherwise, you'll just find yourself in the same defeated position as always, where nothing changes except your dwindling self-esteem.
Make the right choice for victory this V-Day, and schedule a tooth bonding procedure by calling 603-546-7460 before time runs out. For your convenience, you can also request an appointment with me online.
With your new smile, you'll finally have the confidence to meet Valentine's Day with courage and fortitude for a change. Let me help you make it happen, and give me a call today!


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To provide observations and information on the emerging fields of landscape scale conservation, heritage preservation, and sustainable community development.
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Recognize Adirondack Park as National Heritage
By Guest Observer January 29, 2015
By Paul Bray
I've been to the Rockies, and clearly, a visitor can't help but be awestruck by their height and views. Yet the Adirondack Park is where I prefer to go.
Adirondack Museum at Blue Mt. Lake. Photo by Paul Bray.
I've had decades of pleasurable visits to the Adirondack Park to hike, climb, ski, canoe, enjoy the scenery and go to the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake. Whether my visit is to recreate or debate park management policy, I'm drawn to the region's history and ongoing politics as well as its lakes, ponds and rivers.
What brings this to mind is the emerging awareness and appreciation of the Adirondacks' heritage — something Congress ought to take note of, too.
Last year, author Marty Podskoch offered an idea for experiencing the park in his book, "Adirondack 102 Club, Your Passport to the North Country." His idea was for a club to encourage travelers to visit all the towns and villages of the Adirondack Park.
"Since 2001, I traveled to all of the 102 towns and villages in the Adirondacks gathering stories for my five books on the Adirondack fire towers, the Civilian Conservation Corps camps, and Adirondack lore," he writes. "In my travels people have taken me in for the night and shared their home, food and stories. I have met so many wonderful people and seen so many interesting places that I want to share my experience."
Like the Adirondack 46ers — the designation for those who have climbed all 46 Adirondack peaks 4,000 feet or higher — there are now the "102ers" or "Vagabond" members who have visited all 102 Adirondack towns and villages. "Vagabonds" is the term Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone and naturalist John Burroughs used to describe themselves on their automobile camping trips in the Adirondacks and other sojourns throughout the nation.
I knew the Adirondack activist, Barbara McMartin, who wrote 25 guide books and histories of the Adirondacks before she died in 2005. She was engaged with and passionate about the policies of managing the many issues associated with a park with constitutionally protected areas, sustainable forestry, and civic recreational areas like Lake George.
Baxter Mountain in the Adirondacks. Credit: Adirondack Council
One of her last books was "Perspectives on the Adirondacks: A Thirty-year Struggle by People Protecting Their Treasure." I was active in the Sierra Club during those 30 years, and worked with her on Adirondack Park Centennial committee. We coined the name "A Park of Nature and People".
Philip Terrie, who also has written a number of books about the Adirondacks and is a passionate supporter of the forest preserve, declared the park is a "cultural landscape," an acknowledgment of the human and cultural heritage of the park, which I value along with the wild forest.
Now that New York state has five National Heritage Areas — including the cultural landscapes of the Hudson River with its renowned 19th-century art school; the Erie Canal that opened the way to the West; and Niagara Falls, one of the nation's best known natural icons — it is time for Congress to designate the Adirondack Park a National Heritage Area, too. This designation does not call for land use regulation or other restrictions. It is a means to foster recognition of heritage and education of this great American landscape
This article originally appeared in the Albany Times-Union
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The man behind the woman
January 30, 2014 / Suzanne Burden
He shovels the driveway, cooks amazing meals, makes plans and suggestions for both of us to avoid inconvenience and hassles, and rises while it is still dark to meet with Jesus.
Left brained, he is. Fixated on numbers, strategies, and troubleshooting.
Right brained, I am. And capable of driving the wrong way for 45 minutes while singing along to music. (Don't judge. The Creator made me this way. Yeah, we'll go with that.)
We've been married for almost six years, and during the last two or so it feels like we've been slogging through mud in our lives, sometimes it feels like we're in a bog that's up to our necks, but we're still holding hands across all that heavy muck, and at least we're still facing forward, still crying out to our heavenly Father, still waiting on his voice to bring clarity to what has felt like a grand mess.
Very little of the struggle has had anything to do with our relationship per se. Getting hit by a truck while crossing a road, feeling God's clear prompt to leave the church my husband had attended for 17 years and missing some dear friends, the loss of two parents, a difficult seminary journey, the absence of a place for me to minister, an infertility struggle that led into adoption loss that led into numbness and now a kind of blank slate, a kind of offering in which we say, Abba, now what?
And those are just the things we can say out loud.
We have fought to stand upright for some time now and we're still in the fight, doggedly committed to one another and to staying in the game, to not giving up on hope.
So when people ask me, as they often do, "What does your husband think of all this?" and they mean what does your husband think of you having served as an interim pastor, or preaching a sermon, or writing a book about women being freed to reach their full potential in God's Kingdom, I just shake my head and sigh.
Because what they don't see or understand is that without my husband I doubt I would have done or be doing any of these things. He has insisted on me stepping into my giftedness; he wanted me to go to seminary with classrooms full of men and to believe I had a place there, too; he hands out CDs of my sermons to the point of almost-embarrassment.
He's my agent in the best possible sense of the word; he wants to see me flourish and thrive. It sometimes feels like he is the voice of my loving heavenly Father in human terms. He gives me wings to soar.
A month or so ago, he turned to me and said something like, "I just want to see this book get out there so people can read it."
So on the way to church today I made the big ask. I asked if, even though its not his favorite thing to pray in public, if he would consider praying at the start of one of my upcoming author events. It was a funny moment, really, because he was conflicted: he really doesn't want to pray in front of people in the middle of a bookstore, but he wants to do everything he can to support the book, its message and me. So he said yes.
And though its been awhile since joyful laughter has filled our home or our car, God delivered this morning while we were still driving. We got behind a truck with a back window sticker that said:
Women are not always passengers.
We laughed because we weren't entirely sure what it meant, except to say that sometimes women drive cars and lead ministries and thrive in their workplaces and homes. Sometimes they drive and sometimes they ride. I happened to be riding at the time which just made it funnier somehow.
Fast forward a few hours later and we are some of the last to leave church, to get into our vehicle. As we're sitting in the church parking lot, we realize that the same truck with the window cling is right in front of us, that it belongs to a great couple in our Sunday School class, the ones who walked in late that morning after trying to help someone's vehicle get unstuck from the snow. And somehow, just knowing them a little bit, and now realizing we know the people with this uber-interesting window cling just made me start laughing with that gut belly laugh that almost makes you snort.
So if I see you out and about (and I hope I do), you won't have to bother asking, What does your husband think of all this? He believes that God raises up men and women to serve as they are gifted, that I am being obedient to the call of Jesus even when it costs me something, and that God's best plan is for men and women to fully partner together to build His Kingdom here on earth.
Women aren't always passengers. And by the way, neither are men. Instead, we are powerful allies. Thanks be to God, our marriage, though imperfect, is living proof of that.
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January 30, 2014 / Suzanne Burden/
Reclaiming Eve, spiritual formation, women in the Church
marriage in Christ, the blessed alliance