Books on CD, recommendations?

So the most expensive lesson I learned recently is that our van CD player gets stuck on the stickers on library CDs. Or the stickers on any CDs, for that matter, are no-no-no's for our van CD player. To the painful tune of $200 or so to pay to fix the CD player, consider it a lesson learned. No more CDs with stickers allowed, which means we won't be getting anything from the library, thank you very much. It's just less expensive to buy the ones we want. Or borrow them from friends.

So with summer road trips coming up, anyone have an ideas for books on CD that you love? Here are our top six:

1. Charlotte's Web by E B White.

2. Stuart Little by E B White.

3. Beatrix Potter tales

4. Wind in the Willows

5. The Cat in the Hat and Other Dr. Seuss

6. Green Eggs and Ham and other Servings of Dr. Seuss.

We listen to these over and over. Great, sound investments.

Any other suggestions?

Jig

If you need a good Netflix documentary fix, try Jig, about Irish dancing competitions.

It's fun. But at the end I found myself saying, "Ahhhhhh . . . I wanted the other kid to win."

Liz, you should try this. You could even watch it with Millie, I think, if she's be interested in it.

About those Inspirational blogs over there

Sometimes I tire of mom blogs. Things blur and everything looks the same. All kids are witty and attractive. Moms post only self-flattering pictures where they look good. The side of the couch with the stain is under a pillow.

Sometimes I wonder if it's real, or it's the Mom blog show.

So. I've quit reading most Mom blogs---I do make exceptions for family, friends I'm really friends with, or good writers. But random "Everything is SO GREAT!" mom blogs . . . It wasn't working for me. I really don't have much interest anyway in 4,000 ways to make lunch cute. Or elaborate party decorations I won't do anyway.

However. I do, really and truly, enjoy hearing how good moms use their faith to mom well. Instead of the show, lately I've really wanted the tell. Fewer pictures. More application. Fewer food shots. More religious ponderings. Fewer vacation pictures. More discussion of the highs and lows and ins and outs.

Less sugar, more meat. (Or your own protein substitute. :)

In this process, I've found some of the faith-based mom discussion forums listed to the right. Good stuff! Really good stuff. Meat. But well-written, funny meat. I love the recent post on Grow Mama Grow, the one titled My Secret Identity.

Here's a tangent story to go with all this, but trust me, I'll bring it back around:

When my son was two years old, I tried to teach him to share. Share is when you take a turn, they take a turn, you take a turn, they take a turn. Everyone gets a turn. So he would march into a room with another child, yell "SHARE!", and yank the toy from the kid. You know, share. My turn. Right now.

Sometimes I feel this is what happens in inter-religious dialogue. Everyone comes yelling SHARE and talking, talking, talking. They want the first turn to talk. The first turn to explain. The first turn to be understood. But to truly understand people of other faiths, we have to be more mature than two year olds.

Shouldn't we listen first? Attempt to understand first? Be willing to pay attention first? . . . all in the name of getting along and understanding.

So back to these posts. I'm listening. Trying to understand. Laughing hysterically at some of the things the Jewish moms are saying on Kveller . . . marvelling at GrowMamaGrow that although I don't know Mecca, I can understand why Muslim moms want their kids to go there/I have religious places I want my kids to reverence as well. Being willing to listen to the perspective on Visionary  Womanhood. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Even though I don't agree with everything that anyone says, I'm listening to what they say and their beliefs behind it. And above all, I marvel at the things we all have in common: Love of God, love of family, devotion to mothering, a living belief in the value of women and their intelligence. How we choose, as women, as mothers, to apply these principles varies. How to educate children, how many children to have, how to be modest in an immodest society, how to navigate tricky relationships of being both a parent to children and a child of parents,  . . . The WHAT's of the final decisions of an individual woman isn't as important to me as the WHY's of what she chooses.

So that's why those blogs are there. Come with me. Laugh. Think. Be inspired.

Studio C: Clean Comedy

Have you happened upon Studio C yet? Think Saturday Night Live, but family-friendly.

Funny. So funny.

OK, more goofy and silly than anything, but still funny.

The sketch about the couple in Whole Foods from Season 2, Episode Six is hilarious.

Here's the link: 

Liz, at least go watch Season 2, episode 6 . . . the sketches. I can hear you laugh when I watch the Youtube one.

Miscarriage, Comfort from So Many Religious Perspectives

Yesterday was Mother's Day. I hugged all my kids who are here, and missed the one I carried near my heart, only to have her slip away. I miss her even though I never met her. I found this draft of a post I never finished, so I'm finishing it now. It's my Mother's Day present to myself. There is healing in the telling---a wise woman told me that. The beauty is that every time I tell it, there's more beauty and more healing. So here is the post I started three months months ago . . .  

Today is the day my baby was due. The one I lost. Last week a very kind friend asked how I was doing. I dodged the question, made up some passable answer that I was fine, thinking it was an "How are you?" kind of a question. But she persisted. She meant about the miscarriage. She pressed past my dodge. 


I cried. Not because I mourn as constantly as I did at the beginning, but because I was so touched by her kindness---she remembered. She remembered there was baby. I remember there was a baby, too. 


It's lonely to mourn, especially a loss when it appears that even those close to me have pretty much forgotten about the whole thing. It makes friends who remember all the more dear.


I have found the most amazing comfort in the writing of religious women who do not share my faith. Our tenents and texts may be different, but the sorrow and the comfort is the same. 


Here are some that touch me the most:


From a Jewish woman's perspective: 


"In the Olam HaNeshamos (Hall of Souls), all souls wait to come into a physical body. Before the End of Days and arrival of Mashiach, all the souls have to come into physicality.

Some souls, however, are so pure, so holy, that the transition into physicality is too great and painful for them. But as we are coming closer to the time of Mashiach, they, too, have to come down. So Hashem finds bodies to hold them that are special, to hold those incredible souls, and they don’t stay long. Just long enough to fulfill their tafkid (purpose) of achieving physicality.

And I know this is true. Because I don’t know one person who has had a miscarriage that isn’t a special person, an incredible neshama in her own right."

I love this---there are souls that need to come down, they just don't stay long, just long enough to achieve their purpose. It resonates with what I believe, even though I'm not Jewish myself. 

Here's one giving advice to community members of Muslims from a sensitive Muslim woman: 

The thing I love about this article advice is good advice, and universal. It could be about any congregation, anywhere. 

My two favorite quotes:

1. "Indeed, it is a way of life among our communities for everyone to be involved in everything, sharing in each other's sadness and happiness. So either as a close relation or as a distant acquaintance, we all feel inclined to help the couple through their situation. For each role, however, there are some vital things to keep in mind so as not to intensify their grief or make them re-hash their harrowing experience.

You obviously want to help the couple through this difficult time, and you want to help solve their problems, but it is important to choose your words carefully."

2. "Don't suggest that this is karma or punishment for a sin, that perhaps the couple wasn't worthy of raising a child, or that maybe this happened since they put the evil eye on someone else's happiness. Allah has His merciful reasons for what He does, and no one else needs to speculate about what the reasons could be."


Beautiful. Allah has merciful reasons for what He does, and no one else needs to speculate about what the reasons could be. I call my Creator by a different name, but I believe he does have merciful reasons for what he does.


And this one from Momma Buddist:

"I believe that miscarried babies are souls who have reached Nibbana (Nirvana) and simply needed a human life form to get there. We know that in our past lives we have already built incredibly good Karma, because only those with very good Karma can be reborn into human form. I believe that these little souls are actually very old souls who needed one last stepping stone to get where they were going, to get out of the wheel of samsara. They have reached the end of their journeys, after thousands, perhaps millions of years in existence. I am honored to have housed many of these souls."

I don’t believe in the reincarnation of the soul as Mommabuddist does, but still, her words touch me because I do believe that I did house an eternal soul who has always lived and who always will live. For whatever reason, I was a stop in her journey. And, with Mommabuddist, it was an honor to carry this eternal soul. Even if it was for a little while.

And here’s this one, from a Mormon mom who wrote an article in the church’s magazine, which is here,

“It’s hard to say good-bye when you never had the chance to say hello. I may never be able to hold them in my arms, but I will always hold them in my heart. They are part of me. Because of them, I walk softer. Life is more fragile, more precious.

The other night my four-year-old son cried out to me from his room. I quickly crawled out of my bed and went to his side.

“What’s the matter, Joseph?” I asked as I entered his dark room.

“I’m so scared,” he replied.

I held him in my arms to reassure him, and we talked. Soon he settled back in his bed with his arms around his teddy bear.

“If you need me again, just call me and I’ll come,” I said as I kissed him on the cheek and stroked his shoulder.

He was content.

I, too, have cried out in my dark nights, and He has been there. I don’t have all the answers, but I have peace, the peace that someday I will know and understand, the peace that only the Savior can give. And so I am content.”

Here in the words of these women, of so many faiths, of so many backgrounds, I have found such solace. There is so much that binds us:  Mourning for the child we never met, hope, belief in the eternal, a yearning for comfort from Heaven.

The terms and tenets are different, but the loss and the love is the same.

And that comforts me.

And in that, I am not alone. 

I wish I could meet these women, every one. I believe we could sit down at the table of faith, reach our hands out, and be comforted. 

I could spend a whole lot of time at pbs.org and Call the Midwife

Have you seen this?

http://video.pbs.org

PBS has full episodes and you (OK, me, really it's me) can watch to your (my) heart's content or until your (my) eyeballs glaze over.

I just finished all the full episodes they have of Call the Midwife, which I adored. But warning: It's about midwives. Who help women give birth. There are bodies involved. It's birth, which isn't always pretty.

Sidenote: I always laugh really hard at Hollywood's take on birth, where the woman in labor has her hair perfect, her make-up on, and she's having these "When we first fell in love" reminiscing moments with her husband, who is there, calm and unflustered. When is the woman doing these? In between contractions? Oh, when her body is splitting itself in half and is just about to push out a bowling ball?

Well, that's always the time I personally get sentimental myself, so I completely understand.

Anyway. Call the Midwife. I'd say . . . check it out.