This might actually become a continual thing. The podcast is about ten minutes long and it’s just me briefly going over the posts that I wrote this past week. I only cover a tiny bit of what they are each about, but you can read them below if it peaks your interest.
If your listening to this let me know what you think. Should I go more indepth? Should I add other things? Let me know.
Thanks for listening!
Bits of Lyrics from his most recent album, Mockingbird:
From A King & A Kingdom
there are two great lies that i’ve heard:
“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him
From A New Law
don’t teach me about moderation and liberty
i prefer a shot of grape juicedon’t teach me about loving my enemies
don’t teach me how to listen to the Spirit
just give me a new law
From Rich Young Ruler
poverty is so hard to see
when it’s only on your tv and twenty miles across town
where we’re all living so good
that we moved out of Jesus’ neighborhood
From My Enemies Are Men Like Me
peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication
it’s like telling someone murder is wrong
and then showing them by way of execution
From Love is Not Against The Law:
are we defending life
when we just pick and choose
lives acceptable to lose
and which ones to defend‘cause you cannot choose your friends
but you choose your enemies
and what if they were one
one and the same
And for some real good insight into Derek’s views as well as Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What) check out their conversation here.
You’ve all used and become quite familiar with “bookmarks,” but I’d like to introduce you to some tools that will rock your world: Bookmarklets. They are like Piglet is to pigs, similar in nature, but smarter, talking and half dressed.
The best way to explain bookmarklet’s is to just show you some of my favorites. They function just like bookmarks, but they are more like an arsenal of tools cause they do cool things. If you like one, just drag the link into your toolbar. Here are my current can’t do without bookmarklets.
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‘);void(close()) }”>QUOTE: This one is essential for you frequent bloggers. I tweaked a similar bookmarklet so it works specifically for Wordpress
html and it also has “From [title of the page your quoting from with hyperlink]” above the quote. Making quoting easy.
Those are the ones I use regularly. If your looking for more you can find many at bookmarklets.com
Note: I realized after writing this, that most people will write me off as overly paranoid and critical, but please try to see if there is even some validity to what I’m saying.
I’ll start by saying I’m not a Harry Potter hater, nor am I a fanatic. I come from a fairly unbiased side of the fence (it’s a strange looking fence) and I simply want to voice my thoughts and concerns on the most recent movie: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I should preface with two notes, I’ve only read the first book and I’ve only seen the first movie, before seeing this one.
Though I enjoyed the movie overall, I felt there were far too many scenes overt and implied concerning the sexuality of the young characters. I don’t mean to say that youth the age of Harry and his friends don’t have sexual feelings or that those parts should be left out of the movie, I’m more specifically talking about the age difference in two of the relationship scenes specifically. The two I’d like to address are: Hermione and Viktor Krum; and Harry Potter and Myrtle.
We’ll start with Hermione and Viktor. From my amateur detective work while watching the film I believe Hermione is supposed to be 14 (the same age as Harry I assumed) and here date for the big ball is Viktor (who is at least 17, and definitely meant to look bigger, more mature, and older then all of his peers). Now, in an attempt to make that look as good as possible, there are plenty of couples with that big of an age gap, and given Viktor’s seeming lack of intelligence and Hermione’s geniusness, they could even be in the same grade. At the same time that age difference has gotten a lot of folks in a lot of trouble, and it’s a little awkward to see it in a movie targeted to our youth.
The few lines we get from Hermione about Viktor are this:
Actually we didn’t really talk at all, Viktor’s more of a physical being. I just mean he’s not particularly… (I could be wrong but it sounded like an innuendo)
And then there is Harry and Myrtle. I did a little research on Myrtle and found she is a ghost that haunts the Hogwarts bathroom after being killed while a student there (So I guess in actuality she’s student age as well, but she does appear older in the movie). In the movie Myrtle talks to Harry while he’s in the bath and their interaction is again rather sexually driven. The troublesome part is that Harry appears to be very uncomfortable with it, but Myrtle persist nonetheless.
Maybe I’m a little paranoid, but I felt a little uncomfortable with those interactions in a movie geared toward such a young audience.
UPDATE: My good friend Zach pointed out that this critique was overly harsh, and after reviewing it I agree with him. I still think most of the points I make are valid (there are still many biases and subtle sexism throughout the article), but my tone was very out of line. I probably should not have just taken a small chunk and picked at it. There are things in the article I agree with, I realize men have some obstacles to overcome in the nursing profession. I’ll leave the original text up for everyone to read and critique and continue to interact with, but know from the start I realize it is harsher then it should be.
Two days ago we talked over a short quote by the editor of the Journal of Christian Nursing and critiquing some of the implications of that brief quote. Today, we are going to look at a longer passage (from an article applying Wild at Heart to nursing), along with my running commentary, and hopefully we’ll learn some important lessons.
From the Journal of Christian Nursing, “Men in Nursing: Hard-Wired for Adventure” page 15:
The way men are wired greatly directs the areas of nursing in which we find ourselves.
Gender exclusive statements like this always bother me a little. It always seems to imply a hint of “unlike women,” as if the way women are wired doesn’t necessarily direct nursing. You might find this being a little too critical, but what if it said: The way black guys are built really impacts the way they play basketball… or The way Muslim’s handle the Christian-Muslim tension is really commendable. Those two statements are a little more awkward (and racist).
Nurse anesthetists, for example, have a male population approaching 50 percent, despite the six percent total of nurses who are men nationally. Emergency rooms, intensive care units, circulating nurses in the operating room and nurse managers in all areas have higher rates of men than are reflected in the nursing population as a whole. Note that these areas have some similarities.
Let me jump in with my notable similarities (thanks Mindy). These positions are more prestigious and also pay more. Similar to management positions which also are dominated by males. Before we start seeing this as commendable, we should recognize that the affect of sexism and oppression has played a role and still plays a role in any place where men (particularly us white ones) are in positions of power and prestige over women. It’s changing, but it’s not their yet.
There are distinct battles that can be fought every day (an operation, an emergency situation, a critically ill patient or a bottom line to meet). Also, the battles have a clear outcome, a reflection of a man’s input into the battle.
Again, the implications here seem to belittle the more “female” nursing areas, as if they aren’t battles as well. I realize this “battle” terminology is important to Wild at Heart, but I read this and I ask, “What’s your point?”
It is not uncommon to hear men in the break room talk about the struggle involved with a particularly difficult case, and how hard it was to overcome those struggles.
Now this one is really bothersome. What in the world do you think women sit around the break room talking about? Their nails? (according to the author, Richard Haas, women, unlike these men, spend their time “gossiping.”). And in a hugely female dominated field I would think the majority of the time the “men” are usually talking to “women” about these cases, unless they are still keeping to their elitist male circles (and that would be a problem).
Some of these battles provide a background for an adventure, an exotic case or a patient whose condition is extremely tenuous.
“Exotic case”? Are you kidding me? You can go hike through an exotic jungle or go on an exotic vacation, but I highly doubt any patient would like to be referred to as an “exotic case.” Listen carefully to that sentence, it’s very self-oriented. I want the adventure for me. “Battle, Adventure, Exotic, Extremely Tenuous,” all these things make me more excited about the mountain I’m conquering. That’s not what nursing is about.
Nursing is about being a patient advocate. It’s not about the nurse and her prestige or exotic adventures, it’s about her patient and their well being. It’s about speaking up for the patients rights when a bunch of doctors walk-in and talk about this “exotic case” as if the patient wasn’t laying their dying of the disease the doctor’s are calling their latest “adventure.” Nurses love with a selfless love.
Further, some of these areas provide greater financial rewards, important to men who are primary wage earners for their families. -
Once again, the implications of gender exclusive language are disturbing. Let it be known that “Greater financial rewards” are important to WOMEN who are the primary wage earners for their families. But maybe “greater financial rewards” isn’t the point. Maybe women aren’t worried about that, they’ve probably got their priorities straight, it’s about helping people.
Let me finish by saying this: I’m not saying men can’t have their adventures and fight their battles. I am saying when we start elevating men’s motives and activities in such a way that it implies the exclusion or the belittling of what women are and do, we have a problem. Men and women are different, I fully agree. We are wired differently, I can agree with that too. What I can’t agree with is when people (Christian’s especially) lean on these “differences” to support sexism and discrimination.
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