Some Saturday Stuff- April 27th.

Happy Saturday. It’s a bright, beautiful day here in Jersey, signs of spring, indeed. As is my morning ritual of sneezing and nose wiping. I’m not complaining, though. Despite this being a very bad allergy season, so far, I’ve only have some rather minor sinus discomfort. I don’t know if it’s the change in my diet or what, but I’m grateful.

I’ve been throwing out junk, donating clothes, shoes and more, and reorganizing things around the apartment over the past few weeks.

Bye-bye stuff!

Yesterday, I had some fun decorating with some decals from Walls Need Love.I got them on sale from Fab. The result:

I love these things. They peel off for easy removal (essential such we rent this apartment and will eventually be moving), and are so pretty. The straight edged lines of the shapes appeal to K’s modern tastes, and the turquiose-orange-red-purple painted wood beams design work for me. Win-win.

So after mentioning my own hair issues yesterday, I snapped a photo of myself with my hair, without gel and unstraightened. It was stretched from having been put in milkmaid braids, but no heat (believe it or not, I haven’t had my hair straightened since December 2010! This wasn’t totally purposeful, I just haven’t gone to a salon since then and I don’t own any tools to get the job done myself.). I realized how much my hair has grown, which is pretty hard too judge with very coily hair like mine.

The first pic was a twistout from a little over a year and a half ago. The second, yesterday. Even though I *really* wanted to hack it all off last summer, I’m glad I listened to K and didn’t. I wear my hair in a bun or some other up style 90% of the time (not for protective styling… I’m just not creative and I have Z who is increasingly hair crazy), but it’s nice to leave it down for a bit, wild and crazy, and see that despite not going to a professional for so long, I haven’t caused my hair to fall out. Score!

Enough about me. Well, sort of. In my effort to eat healthy (stay with me, this is just the opener, this paragraph is not really about me), I tried switching to brown rice. K, dutiful husband that he is, ate it without complaint. Z, being Z, wasn’t feeling it. She actually managed to eat around the rice and get to the beans or lentils. She then smooshed it into a paste and smeared it on the side of the microwave. I didn’t mind it, but white rice is better, by far. Turns out, it might just be better all around. From Butter Believer:

 

I’m getting pretty sick of people lumping together white rice in the same category as other “refined carbs” such as that oh-so-scary white flour and sugar on which people blame every single disease and disorder known to man. In Hawaii, where I was living up until recently, the standard local diet is commonly labeled as being very unhealthy, in large part due to the huge amount of white rice consumed. You put rice on your plate with every meal. Even breakfast. Eggs with spam – oh but it’s surely those two scoops of sticky rice on the side that’s to blame!

 

Eye. Roll.

 

Cut out those refined carbs! Like white rice and bread!” they say.

 

Well I say, think again, healthy diet dogma-spreaders. That’s nothing but a bunch of dogma dog poo.

 

Rice is delightful. It’s healthful, it’s nutritious, it’s a great source of energy. And if you ask me, white rice is the most delightful of all. As much as that makes me sound like some sort of weirdo rice-racist, I promise you, I can explain.

 

White Rice vs Brown Rice

 

Are you convinced that brown rice truly is superior to white? Let’s look at the differences.

Brown rice is brown because it’s got the bran on it. White rice is just rice with the bran and germ removed.

The germ is extremely susceptible to rancidity, which is bad because of the very high content of polyunsaturated fat it contains, which is easily oxidized, and leads to all sorts of problematic reactions in the body. Great. Leave it out, then.

The bran is good for pretty much nothing but fiber. But, you know what? (Oh, man — brace yourselves! Major violation of politically-correct nutrition advice, coming your way!)

 

FIBER IS NOT GOD’S GREATEST GIFT TO NUTRIENT-KIND.

 

Many people eat way, way too much fiber, which can lead to serious digestive disorders, and even colon cancer. Read Fiber Menace for more information on that. I’m not saying we should be afraid of it, but if you’re finding the need to intentionally force yourself to eat more of it, like in fibery brown rice, there’s a bigger issue you’re not dealing with.

So, everyone choking down their Fiber-One cereals and psyllium husks really aren’t doing themselves any favors at all. And the only reason they’re constipated is because their metabolism sucks! (Which you can fix!) Healthy people don’t need tons of fiber, and they generally don’t need to go out of their way looking for it.

 

Fiber. Check. Don’t need it. What else is there?

 

Oh, alright, fine. There are some nutrients in rice bran. Some B vitamins, some minerals, amino acids, blah, blah — yes, most naturally-occurring foods have nutrients.

 

And along with those nutrients, quite a lot of anti-nutrients are all up in your brown rice bran, too!

Read the rest here. From On The Media, an interesting look at how the media has framed the Boston Bombing suspects. What group did they belong to? Muslims? Terrorists? Whites?

The Boston bombing has become a Rorschach blot for the media, who have tied it to everything from immigration to welfare to national security. Bob talks to The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart about the media and the culture’s desire to impose meaning on tragedy.

A provacative post at Deeper Story on the gospel versus testimony:

I’ve nearly given up blogging every day for the past two months.

 

I cannot hear Jesus over the stories anymore.

 

What I hear is how STORY is saving the world. How AUTHENTICITY is the most important element of sharing.

 

I’m over it.

 

I’m tired of it.

 

Your story, your authenticity, right now I don’t really care.

 

I’m going through some serious spiritual silence, some hunger pains of missing Jesus, and what I need to hear is about Him and not so much about you.

 

Your story is not what has redeemed me.

 

The world was not saved by your story.

 

What is the gospel?

 

If our answer to that question is anything other than a holistic pronouncement of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we’ve missed the point.

 

I don’t believe every blog post needs to be an explicit altar call, but if it is a post that does not in some way make a claim that whatever my experience is, I am being transformed by and into the image of Jesus Christ, than I’m not sure we can call it Christian.

Yes, Jesus is the Christ who hears the stories of the people, but He is also the Christ who says Go and sin no more, the Christ who is the Christ of Israel, a true Jew, a keeper of the Law and a fulfiller of the Law, who gave commandments and instruction.

 

And to paraphrases liberally something St. Paul says to the Corinthians, we have no hope if all we have is our own stories.

 

If we are not reaching out, into, united with the great Story, then what is its worth?

K told me yesterday, “It’s like you’re living again.” Times are a-changing. Bob, take it away. Have a great Saturday.