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encephalonfatigue · 7 years ago

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nativity and narrative

the third of a series of posts beginning in Advent, leading through Christmas and into Epiphany. this post discusses issues of grace and ‘self-control’, body-shaming, narrative awareness, joyous habits of resistance, and the mingling of heaven and earth. lots of quotes from The Brothers Karamazov as well.

Sarah Coakley, in her beautiful first volume of systematic theology, contrasts the theological attitudes of Gregory of Nyssa with those of Augustine concerning sex, bodies, and self-control (a long but very worthwhile quote):

“[Augustine’s] attitude to women and sex, which, as we shall see, is mixed and complex, is crucially different from Gregory [of Nyssa]’s in at least this respect: even normal marital sexual activity is intrinsically worrisome to Augustine because of the revolt of the male body – the phallus – against the man’s rational will to have complete control over himself. Physical sex, for Augustine, undermines the ideal of control or ‘mastery’, of one’s self. Yet the contrast with Gregory’s spiritual emphasis on the indispensability of loss of mental control in the allegory of Moses and Mount Sinai is striking…

It is in his late work the Life of Moses, most memorably, that Gregory tells the allegorical story of the soul’s ascent to intimate relationship with the divine. As with Philo and Clement before him, Moses’s ascent up Mount Sinai is for Gregory the ‘type’ of the contemplative’s quest for God. In this treatise, Moses moves in three stages from the light of the Burning Bush (interpreted as the light of the incarnation), through cloudy darkness in the wilderness, to the thick darkness of the peak of Mount Sinai, the climax of the ascent. The language, even in the Greek, may strike the reader as sexually symbolic:

‘as the soul makes progress… It… leaves all surface appearances, not only those that can be grasped by the senses, but also those which the mind itself seems to see, and it keeps on going deeper until by the operation of the spirit it penetrates the invisible and incomprehensible, and it is there that it sees God. The true vision and true knowledge of what we seek consists precisely in not seeing, in an awareness that our goal transcends all knowledge and is everywhere cut off from us by the darkness of incomprehensibility.’

Thus, the classic Platonic goals of light and clarity and achieved perfection are extraordinarily reversed by Gregory into darkness and obscurity and a perfection that ‘never arrives’… now we see that the goal of the Christian life is a very particular kind of loss of control.”

It is my view that Augustine’s view on self-control has most often found itself allied to that of empire, and contradictory to some of the most important narrative currents of the Biblical canon. It belongs to an ideology historically and presently employed by empire to control bodies. This Christmas Eve, at the United Church near my house, I heard this imagery about the Winter Solstice and how Christmas is situated within the year such that we are reminded how ‘light breaks the darkness’. This is a fairly ‘progressive’ church, that opens each service with indigenous territorial acknowledgements and has social justice themes integrated into every Sunday’s liturgy. But I can’t help but think the imagery of ‘light breaking darkness’ has certain inescapable racial implications, even if somewhat completely unintentional. Watching and listening to the KKK’s liturgy of cross-burning on W. Kamau Bell’s CNN show, I noticed very similar language there, and I can’t help but feel very unsettled about that, even if the parallels are obviously just coincidental.

In Me You & Her’s Christmas song “Labor of Love” one of the lines about Mary during nativity goes:

“For the girl on the ground in the dark, every beat of a beautiful heart, was a labor of love.”

Darkness is thematic for nativity, but darkness in the context of beauty, like the woman in Song of Solomon says: “I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.” (Song of Solomon 1:5). Coakley’s theological insistence on opening up important language about God’s presence experienced in darkness, by referencing verses like Exodus 20:21 (“Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was”), has not only important racial implications, but of course, in a quite separate issue, explores the mystery and unknowability of God, along with important themes like grace.

This gets at the Pauline conviction that part of the Christian task is to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). Wendell Berry wrote that: “Faith is not necessarily, or not soon, a resting place. Faith puts you out on a wide river in a boat, in the fog, in the dark.” The Enlightenment, for all its indispensable contributions to human flourishing, did leave us with an unfortunate fixation on ‘control’, and colonialism was as much a part of its project as questioning authority. Being able to see all things clearly is the rationale behind the enormous surveillance projects undertaken both by governments and corporations. It is the force behind ‘market segmentation’, and all the social inequality that such a business practice perpetuates. “Seeing” more and more does nothing to necessarily challenge how we interpret such information. One cannot avoid the connection between ‘light breaking the darkness’ and ‘control over bodies’. In contrast to this, Coakley writes:

“For the very act of contemplation – repeated, lived, embodied, suffered – is an act that, by grace, and over time, inculcates mental patterns of ‘un-mastery’, welcomes the dark realm of the unconscious, opens up a radical attention to the ‘other’ …The desire not to ‘master’ cannot be summoned by mere good intention or fiat. It is a matter, I submit, of waiting on divine aid and transformation, a transcendent undoing of manipulative human control or aggression.”

One of the greatest ways of controlling bodies, is getting bodies to control themselves. Like embodied sexual pleasure in Augustinian Christianity, one of the predominant narratives that surround food and health today is that of ‘self-control’. In my last post, I tried to allude to the inadequacy and mistaken nature of that narrative. I appealed to the dichotomy between Babel’s ideology of ‘control’ and ‘uniformity’, and Pentecost’s alternative of ‘grace’ and ‘diversity’. I suggested that when a narrative appeals to a notion of ‘taking control’ of one’s life to become healthy, it appeals to the ideology of Babel. Reducing health to ‘controlling’ one’s lifespan functions in a similar way. I proposed that habits of eating and speaking in particular ways offer us sites of resistance against empire’s ideology of total control that persists today. I want to try to pull all these things together now, and explore how faith traditions offer alternative narratives of resistance in contradiction with the narratives of empire we knowingly or unknowingly inhabit.

Victim-blaming is the narrative of Babel, as Mary knew in the midst of her ‘disgraceful conception’ while singing her Magnificat, and consequently as Jesus knew and taught his disciples. Empire suggests that individuals are fully responsible for their own ‘failures’, and empire is in the business of constructing ever more supposed ‘failures’ to burden these victims with (Luke 11:46). Poor health is caused by a lack of individual ‘self-control’. And poor health can be identified by how well one’s body size and shape conforms to the homogenous standards put forward by this empire. And of course women disproportionately bear this burden. Yet how valid is such a narrative? The fat studies academic and activist, Marilynn Wann writes:

“Weight, like height, is a human characteristic that varies across any population in a bell curve. An individual person’s weight also varies over the course of a lifetime, influenced largely by inherited predisposition and only marginally by environmental factors like eating and exercise patterns.”

And there’s plenty of empirical evidence behind Wann’s assertions. Cambridge professor, Giles Yeo, has insisted that while BMI is connected with how much one eats, genes have a powerful influence over the amount of food one consumes and hence one’s weight. There have also been studies of how even twins raised in significantly different environments still end up with fairly similar body weights. There is plenty of evidence that eating well and exercise has a significantly positive influence on one’s health, but has a limited influence on one’s weight or BMI. (See papers in here, here, here, and here.)

This again raises the important distinction between body size/shape (weight and BMI) and one’s health. Notions of being ‘obese’ or ‘overweight’ have less to do with health, and more to do with empire’s homogenized standard of body size and shape, and ultimately controlling bodies who fail to live up to such an impossible standard, especially by convincing them they need to buy the latest weight-loss product or clothes that make them look thinner. Marilynn Wann asks:

“How do you refer to people at the heavier-than-average end of the weight bell curve? Currently, in mainstream U.S. society, the O-words, “overweight” and “obese,” are considered more acceptable, even more polite, than the F-word, “fat.” In the field of fat studies, there is agreement that the O-words are neither neutral nor benign… “Overweight” is inherently anti-fat. It implies an extreme goal: instead of a bell curve distribution of human weights, it calls for a lone, towering, unlikely bar graph with everyone occupying the same (thin) weights. If a word like “overweight” is acceptable and even preferable, then weight prejudice becomes accepted and preferred. (The population is getting taller, but we do not bemoan overheight or warn people to keep below, say, five feet eight. Being tall is valued.)

Our habits of naming things is important. Naming things anew transformed Abram to Abraham, Jacob to Israel, Saul to Paul. Beyond the theological force of such an idea, empirical research has shown that language does indeed change the way people live in their daily lives.

Ellen Langer, a psychology professor at Harvard known for her academic studies on mindfulness, has done a multitude of studies that reveal how naming things in different ways can drastically change the way people engage with that very same thing. For example, in a study on hotel room cleaners, simply by telling these workers that their type of work satisfied the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an ‘active lifestyle’, workers were observed to have a decrease in weight, blood pressure, and body fat (unfortunate choice of dependent variables considering all the studies I just cited), without increasing the amount of exercise they did outside of work.

Naming the daily tasks as ‘exercise’ rather than ‘work’ affected the way workers engaged with these tasks, and ultimately reformed the psychological approach they had to their daily work habits. Langer and Crum, in their paper contextualize their study by saying:

“Doctors now prescribe behavioral changes such as exercise for chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. We wondered whether the well-known benefits of exercise are in whole or in part the result of the placebo effect.”

Language matters! These workers inhabited a new narrative, that of an ‘active lifestyle’. And this had profound effects on their bodies. I believe that an ‘active lifestyle’ is not the penultimate narrative which we can choose to inhabit though, and there would certainly be some ulterior motives for getting low-waged workers to subscribe to such a habit of speech and such a narrative.

I’m convinced that sacred texts, to a greater extent, provide a powerful trove of speech habits — grammars by which we may better enjoy lives that are beautifully shaped, life-affirming, humane, interesting, adventurous, and meaningful. Grammars of resistance against an empire that so underhandedly educates us everyday in its own grammar of radical self-sufficiency and self-interest. Isolated and atomized individuals is the byproduct of a grammar that divides and conquers. A grammar of death. Dostoyevsky addressed this in The Brothers Karamazov through the words of Father Zosima:

“Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age—it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. For every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into units, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them. He heaps up riches by himself and thinks, ‘How strong I am now and how secure,’ and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence. For he is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity, and only trembles for fear he should lose his money and the privileges that he has won for himself. Everywhere in these days men have, in their mockery, ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort.”

So when it comes to our habits of ‘naming’, empire often attempts to convince us that body mass index is a good proxy for ‘health’, because it believes health is a matter of “isolated individual effort” and wants to shift the blame to a person’s self-control over eating. The rationale being: if someone is fat, it is because they lack self-control and eat too much, and if they’re health fails and they become ill it is their own fault, and there is no collective responsibility to help financially support their healing. Marilynn Wann shows that such judgements associating health with BMI are more socially driven than scientifically, and are ultimately about ‘social control’:

“Weight is an inaccurate basis for predicting individual health or longevity, much less someone’s eating or exercise habits. For example, the majority of people categorized as “obese”—seven out of eight—are not diabetic (National Center for Health Statistics, 2006). “Health” can be used to police body conformity and can be code for weight-related judgments that are socially, not scientcally, driven. “Health” can also cover a whole range of beliefs and behaviors (eating disorders, moralizing about food or fitness, alienation from one’s own body) that reinforce social control around weight and can be very damaging to well-being. Like the F-word, health is a term that calls for a conscious project of reclamation.”

If people of Christian faith are to understand that bodies are the dwelling sites of God’s Spirit, then it follows that these bodies deserve access to the health they need to dignify themselves as such. But is it not completely counterproductive to promote ‘health’ by shaming the size and shape of bodies — i.e. shaming the dwelling place of God? How best are we to think about a word like ‘health’? Wendell Berry, in “The Unsettling of America” wrote:

“The word health belongs to a family of words, a listing of which will suggest how far the consideration of health must carry us: heal, whole, wholesome, hale, hallow, holy. And so it is possible to give a definition to health that is positive and far more elaborate than that given to it by most medical doctors and the officers of public health. …Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is.”

In what ways does the paradigm of ‘obesity’ make ‘health’ seemingly unattainable for people of particular body sizes and shapes? How does such a paradigm alienate individuals and erode connections, which are the basis of health according to Berry? How does the paradigm wound rather than heal? How does it strip away a body’s holiness? Marilynn Wann believes:

“Calling fat people “obese” medicalizes human diversity. Medicalizing diversity inspires a misplaced search for a “cure” for naturally occurring difference. Far from generating sympathy for fat people, medicalization of weight fuels anti-fat prejudice and discrimination in all areas of society. People think: If fat people need to be cured, there must be something wrong with them. Cures should work; if they do not, it is the fat person’s fault and a license not to employ, date, educate, rent to, sell clothes to, give a medical exam to, see on television, respect, or welcome such fat people in society… Medicalization actually helps categorize fat people as social untouchables. It is little surprise, then, that when fat people do fall ill, we get blame, not compassion.”

I think resisting empire involves challenging its narrative of non-conforming bodies being the problem, and shifting it to a narrative of healing, which is exactly what health is about. In fiery homiletic fashion, Wann challenges the narrative of empire and its reductive notion that health and beauty can be reduced to some arbitrary and unrealistic norm of body size and shape:

“if you believe that fat people could (and should) lose weight, then you are not doing fat studies—you are part of the $58.6 billion-per-year weight-loss industry or its vast customer base… If you believe that being fat is a disease and that fat people cannot possibly enjoy good health or long life, then you are not doing fat studies. Instead, your approach is aligned with “obesity” researchers, bariatric surgeons, public health officials who declare “war on obesity”, and the medico-pharmaceutical industrial complex that profits from dangerous attempts to “cure” people of bodily difference. If you believe that thin is inherently beautiful and fat is obviously ugly, then you are not doing fat studies work either. You are instead in the realm of advertising, popular media, or the more derivative types of visual art—in other words, propaganda.”

In this age of rugged individualism, we often believe we write the stories of our own lives. However, I believe this underestimates the power structures around us and their capacity to conform bodies according to the narratives and interests of said power structures. If people have particular diet-related health conditions do we really believe they wrote that into the story of their own life? If people believe they possess anxieties over their body image, did they write this anxiety into their own life? If we hold prejudices against fat bodies, did we carefully write that into the narrative we inhabit, or was that written in by the billion dollar weight-loss industry and do we simply unconsciously inhabit their narrative?

I believe that whether we are conscious of it or not, we inhabit narratives that we did not write. Byung-Chul Han, in “The Burnout Society”, writes about one of the subtle shifts in the predominant narrative of control empire offers:

“Today's society is no longer Foucault's disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society. Also its inhabitants are no longer "obedience-subjects" but "achievement-subjects.” …Alain Ehrenberg locates depression in the transition: ‘…The depressed individual is unable to measure up; he is tired of having to become himself’ …Nietzsche would say that that human type in the process of becoming reality en masse is no sovereign superman but "the last man," who does nothing but work.”

Zizek once posited that, “We feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom.” Speaking about narratives is important because they provide the language to articulate the unfreedom we do not adequately recognize around us. Narratives function whether one chooses to notice or not. When we acknowledge that we inhabit narratives we did not write, we understand that we inhabit a context and a history.

In his book “Jayber Crow”, Wendell Berry has his narrator say:

“I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom.”

When we ‘choose’ to buy more things, travel to more places, accomplish more goals, have more sex (or less sex), gain more respect or influence or power, find more happiness or love are we truly living out ‘our own story’ or are we subscribing to a narrative demanded and required by the market economy? Are we the authors of our own lives, or characters who are being groomed to become better consumers and more productive producers in the drama of capitalism? Are we living out a narrative that recognizes true abundance when it exists, or a narrative that convinces people that they do not have enough, they do not do enough, they do not save enough, they have not traveled enough, experienced enough (monetizable experiences), accomplished enough? In summary: are themselves not enough. Are we living out a narrative of inadequacy or generous abundance?

In an individualistic culture within which the obscured overarching narrative continues to perpetuate individual inadequacy (mendable by some economic transaction), and in such a narrative that treats other people as either aids or impediments to achieving this adequacy (self-actualization), what will ultimately be the impact on the particular human bodies which inhabit such a narrative? Are the narratives we knowingly or unknowingly choose to inhabit life-affirming or dehumanizing? Are faith communities presenting an adequate narrative for resisting the dominant narratives that shape our lives and our bodies?

Babel’s narrative was a colonial narrative of ‘limitlessness’. Empires don’t believe there should be limits, at least not for them. They believe their way of speaking, their way of thinking, and their way of doing should spread and be imposed without limits. Empire is the consequence of fostering habits of limitlessness. To quote Kolya from Dostoyevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov” again:

“Everything is habit with men, everything even in their social and political relations. Habit is the great motive-power.”

Habits of limitlessness are the basis of Babel’s “social and political relations”. The Grand Inquisitor says:

“Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? …Where Thy temple stood will rise a new building; the terrible tower of Babel will be built again.”

Meaning: there is no limit to what is morally justifiable as long as people are fed. Environmental degradation, violence, totalitarianism, and patriarchy are all allowed as long as people are fed. In “An Other Kingdom” Brueggemann, Block, and McKnight cheekily rephrase a similar line from “The Brothers Karamazov” to say:

“without God everything is possible, but if God be there, some things are not possible.”

Limits are the basis of human rights. There are some things that cannot be done. There are such things as ‘sins’. Human rights are constraints on a pervertedly pure form of utilitarianism.

Limits are important because they make claims on those with more privilege. Limits make space for those with less privilege. We cannot consume the earths resources limitlessly because the Earth has finite resources. Creation is finite, and limits are an honest recognition of that. Empires subscribe to an ideology of limitlessness, because they want limitless control over bodies and resources. Self-control is the ideology of the panopticon. Empires implement ‘limitless’ control over bodies by constructing habits of self-discipline (often unconsciously) in those bodies, as Foucault pointed out. Discipline to the narrative of empire, ironically fostered by a belief that the sky is the limit, and you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Even if you are poor and marginalized, since those are no excuses for ‘failure’.

Because doing things out of sheer willpower each day is exhausting, habits are a recognition of our finitude. Our boundedness. Our embodiedness and the embodiedness of others. The fact that bodies other than our own exist makes certain claims on us, especially when we have access to more power and privilege than those other bodies. It is a recognition that our whims cannot expand limitlessly outwards if they impinge on other bodies less privileged than our own. Capitalist ideology is a faith in limitless growth. Limitless increase in consumption of the earths resources. Limitless working hours. Sabbath is a habit which resists this ideology of limitlessness. It is a recognition of our finitude, and our need for rest from ceaseless production and consumption.

Sabbath is an alternative to the pinnacle of Rostow’s stages of economic growth: “an age of high mass consumption.” Pharaoh did not permit his slaves to practice Sabbath, but claimed they were just being lazy. Pauline justification relies on the great tradition of practicing Sabbath as a habit. In contrast to a person’s worth being defined by market productivity, Paul’s notion of justification dissociates our worth or status from our deeds, and instead places them in the domain of Divine action. Our worth is based rather on the fact that we are created and loved by God. We no longer are what we do. Our value lies in our createdness in God’s image, rather than being something to be earned or achieved. Bodies are not important because they are ‘productive’ or ‘contribute to the economy’. Bodies are important because they are created in God’s likeness, and are temples of the living Spirit of God. The texts in Jewish and Christian scriptures, like sacred texts of other faiths, present narratives of resistance, and are Christians fully engaging with them? Sabbath is one habit that allows us to engage with this narrative of resistance, against empire’s narrative that we must keep producing and consuming without limit and without rest.

All our lives are comprised of habits, and like narratives, habits are a part of our lives whether we are aware of them or not. In my last post, I spoke of fostering habits of resistance. I believe this first requires garnering an awareness of the habits we already inhabit, and how they might be transformed or even sublimated to become habits of resistance.

Habits, I believe, are reflective of the type of narratives we subscribe to. That is why narratives often lie at the centre of faith traditions, and why people of faith continue to gather around sacred texts written so long ago. Religious narratives sustain spiritual practice and spiritual habits. Many sacred texts contain beautiful and mysterious narratives that people of faith continue to find compelling — potentially even more compelling than the narratives modernity has offered us. Paul Ricouer wrote that:

“time becomes human time to the extent that it is organized after the manner of narrative.”

In other words, because we are what Jonathan Gottschall calls “storytelling animals”, narrative is the means by which we can humanize time. Ricouer’s reflections on Time and Narrative takes on two concepts from Aristotle’s Poetics: muthos (‘emplotment’, or “the organization of the events”) and mimesis (‘mimetic activity’, or “the imitation or representation of action”). Here, we have a glimpse at the powerful “relationship between poetic activity and temporal experience”, between narrative and habit. Ricouer writes:

“that the praxis belongs at the same time to the real domain, covered by ethics, and the imaginary one, covered by poetics, suggests that mimesis functions not just as a break but also as a connection, one which establishes precisely the status of the "metaphorical" transposition of the practical field by the muthos.”

So in summary, Ricouer says:

“If you want to change people's obedience then you must change their imagination.”

If religion’s subject is that of ‘faith’ or ‘belief’, then something intangible or invisible must be its object. Hence such intangibility functions as a gap which separates, and the object is only accessible by way of some form of ‘imagination’. Many people scornful of faith or religion use the word ��imagination” or “imaginary” in a pejorative fashion. But something as fundamental as ‘memory’ is only accessible by way of ‘imagination’, a type of selective ‘reconstruction’ of the past. And our hopes for our future are also forged in the midst of ‘imagination’, hence John Lennon’s “Imagine” being sung each New Year. With ‘past’ and ‘future’ in sight, we find the shape of narrative in our notion of ‘imagination’, which mediates our ‘beliefs’ and the envisioned ‘telos’ (or future) we yearn for.

The narratives we believe in, and inhabit, shape the actions we take in life. But sometimes the narratives we claim to believe in, are not the ones we really believe in, as reflected in the actions we take. Actions are a better indicator of our faith, than what we claim with our mouths. I think I recall Zizek once saying that we get a glimpse of our ideological beliefs when we, for example, observe the sorts of things we do alone at home at the end of the day, too exhausted to think. This is derived from Zizek’s main thesis that our ideological beliefs and convictions have less to do with what we ‘think’ (reflected by our conscious beliefs) than what we ‘do’ (reflective of our unconscious beliefs). In other words, our habits (especially unconscious) are reflective of our unconscious beliefs. That’s why philosophical propositions are never enough. Because our beliefs and our faith have less to do with what we think (propositions) than what we do (habit). Habits are actions at the scale of the everyday. Annie Dillard famously said that:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

And our days and hours are comprised of our habits, or as Zizek might claim, our beliefs incarnate. The science fiction writer Octavia Butler, in The Parable of the Sower, has this lovely quote in her protagonist Lauren’s journal, which says:

“Belief Initiates and guides action-- Or it does nothing.”

When Butler’s protagonist, Lauren, talks about how “[t]here are all kinds of changes in the universe,” her interlocutor responds: "Then they're supposed to do what? …Read a poem?" Lauren responds:

"Or remember a truth or a comfort or a reminder to action… People do that all the time. They reach back to the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran, or some other religious book that helps them deal with the frightening changes that happen in life."

In their book “American Grace”, Harvard professor Robert Putnam and Notre Dame professor David Campbell explore studies that show how:

“By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.”

Putnam and Campbell even found this generosity to be greater for secular causes too. Yet they found that the particular doctrines believed in and particular practices engaged with didn’t seem to matter to how generous these people of faith were, only that they belonged to a religious community. They say:

“It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing.”

This is interesting, especially with respect to Zizek’s claim that ‘ideology’ functions as ‘action’ more than ‘thought’. Zizek, while an atheist, is deeply interested in theology and and what socialists can learn from Christianity. I believe Zizek would say that while many secular socialist activists claim a particular ideology, a somewhat different underlying ideology seems to be operating at the level of their actions. Zizek is also interested in how Christian communities are able to sustain movements much more successfully than secular leftist movements. Jonathan Haidt, in his book “The Righteous Mind”, presents evidence that faith does seem to help sustain movements for longer periods of time:

“There is now a great deal of evidence that religions do in fact help groups to cohere… The clearest evidence comes from the anthropologist Richard Sosis, who examined the history of two hundred communes founded in the United States in the nineteenth century.For many nineteenth-century communes, the principles were religious; for others they were secular, mostly socialist. Which kind of commune survived longer? Sosis found that the difference was stark: just 6 percent of the secular communes were still functioning twenty years after their founding, compared to 39 percent of the religious communes.”

I believe religions offer narratives and habits which help communities cohere. But these habits of resistance against empire come in different shades and colours. There is not one single habit that is to be imposed, but the diversity in habit works in a complementary fashion to allow communities to perform acts of resistance in a sustained way. There’s a wonderfully revealing line in Matthew’s Gospel that shows this variability, where Jesus complains about the criticisms the temple elite level at him and John:

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds. (Matthew 11:18-19)

Even though John the Baptist and Jesus were such different people, the ‘powers that be’ had a problem with both of them, because they were both engaged in habits of resistance regarding food, even though they did so in such radically different ways. The powers claimed John the Baptist was too ascetic and Jesus was a drunkard and glutton. How fascinating to learn that Jesus had a reputation as a glutton! What does that say to those of us who shame people over how much they eat, or shame people over their body size and shape? What might it suggest about common habits of stereotyping people of a particular body size/shape or BMI with ‘unhealthiness’, ‘laziness’, or ‘a lack of order in their lives’?

How fascinating, too, that Jesus had a reputation as a drunkard! What does that say to those of us who shame people with an alcohol problem? Especially those sitting on sidewalks, asking us for money. Advent, which has just past, reminds us that Jesus is to come again, but also that Jesus is always coming to us, again and again, as the stranger in need, as it is written:

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me… ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:35,40)

Many people in need have a reputation for wasting their money on alcohol because people assume they are drunkards. We should never forget many people assumed Jesus was a drunkard too.

John and Jesus represent two dimensions of resistance:

1.) John shows us an example of ascetic resistance, involving fasting and living off the land in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey.

2.) Jesus shows us an example of joyous resistance, involving eating, drinking, and partying with the ostracized, and counter to strict utilitarian ethics, accepted irrationally expensive perfume for his feet, because it was a a very humanizing gift from the heart.)

Both contribute to resistance, and both of their wisdoms are ‘vindicated by their deeds’. Cornel West, in a talk once said: “While imprisoned before his execution, Thomas More wondered why Socrates never cried and Jesus never laughed.”

A United Church minister at my school also mentioned this once as something that disturbed him quite a bit when he was younger. But I think there’s too much evidence that Jesus was in fact engaged in joyful resistance, and that he must have laughed. When Jesus said in Luke:

“Woe to you who are full now, �� for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. (Luke 6:25)

he could not have meant starve yourself and never be joyful. At least it would be very difficult to do that and still garner a reputation as a glutton and drunkard, partying with rowdy publicans and sinners! These two ‘woes’ are in reference to the first ‘woe’:

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. (Luke 6:24)

People who eat a lot by withholding their abundance from others, and laugh at the poverty around them in self-congratulation. Whatever habits Jesus engaged in to garner a reputation as a drunkard and a glutton, they must have been habits of joyous resistance. In describing the prayer Jesus taught his followers to pray so long ago, Hauerwas remarks:

“Sometimes people say, ‘I often feel guilty that, when I’m praying the Lord’s prayer, I’m not really thinking about what I’m praying. I just say the words out of habit.’ Habit is good. Most of the really important things we do in life, we do out of habit. We eat, sleep, make love, shake hands, hug our children out of habit. Some things in life are too important to be left up to chance. Some things in life are too difficult to be left up to spontaneous desire—things like telling people that we love them or praying to God.”

I love how Hauerwas focuses habits on joyful things like eating, telling people that we love them, hugging children, and making love. These are the habits of joyous resistance that Jesus exemplified in those ’disreputable’ habits of eating and drinking he engaged in two-thousand years ago.

Nativity is a feast day, which for some Christians, is a transition from the fasting of Advent to the feast days of Christmastide (‘twelve days of Christmas’). Feast days are a type of habit related to food — a habit of joyful resistance and of celebratory resistance.

One of my favourite portions of Dostoyevsky’s ‘Brother’s Karamazov’ is a scene not too long after Father Zosima dies, which references one of Christ’s habits of resistance. It takes place at night where Alyosha Karamazov is kneeling by Father Zosima’s body and John’s Gospel is being read:

““And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine” ... Alyosha heard. “Ah, yes, I was missing that… I love that passage: it's Cana of Galilee, the first miracle.... Ah, that sweet miracle! It was not men's grief, but their joy Christ visited, He worked His first miracle to help men's gladness.””

How beautiful that Christ’s first miracle is to “help men’s gladness” by turning water into wine, near the end of a party too, when everyone was already drunk. Joyous resistance against the narrative of self-control. The narrative of turning water to wine certainly has a Eucharistic tone, and therefore is connected Christ’s feeding of the five thousand with loaves of bread. For Christians, Eucharist is a reminder of nativity, the embodiment of God’s peace and justice in the figure of Christ. And Eucharist is also habit of resistance because it is always connected with feeding the hungry and gladening the hearts of the weary. Or as Isaiah 55:1’s invitation says:

“you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Eucharist is always a reminder, for Christians, that they follow a crucified Lord, a victim of state-sanctioned violence. A violence that exists to foster control in the other bodies that witness it. Eucharist is a recognition of the tragic nature of the human condition, and the suffering which persists. But Eucharist is always a habit of hope because it perceives God’s presence, solidarity, allyship and identification with victims of violence, as James Cone and Jurgen Moltmann both articulate so well.

Returning to “The Brother’s Karamazov”, Alyosha eventually falls into a slumber and has a vision of the Marriage of Cana seeing Father Zosima at the wedding:

“It was his voice, the voice of Father Zosima… “We are rejoicing,” the little, thin old man went on. “We are drinking the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many guests? …Why do you wonder at me? I gave an onion to a beggar, so I, too, am here. And many here have given only an onion each—only one little onion.... What are all our deeds? And you, my gentle one, you, my kind boy, you too have known how to give a famished woman an onion to-day. Begin your work, dear one, begin it, gentle one!... Do you see our Sun, do you see Him? …He has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever.... There they are bringing new wine.””

There is undeniably incarnational echoes in language like “he has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us”. How Emmanuel (‘God with us’) is also as much ‘God rejoices with us’, coming to help our gladness. And the onion line is so beautiful. It comes from a story Grushenka told Alyosha earlier in the novel which goes:

“Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I'll pull you out.’ And he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I'm to be pulled out, not you. It's my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. So that's the story, Alyosha; I know it by heart, for I am that wicked woman myself. I boasted to Rakitin that I had given away an onion, but to you I'll say: ‘I've done nothing but give away one onion all my life, that's the only good deed I've done.’ So don't praise me, Alyosha, don't think me good, I am bad, I am a wicked woman and you make me ashamed if you praise me.”

This so beautifully fits with the story Father Zosima told about his brother on his deathbed, who said, “Mother, my little heart, in truth we are each responsible to all for all..." And such a vast and impossible responsibility dissolves any sense of self-congratulation we might develop over the important acts of love we do end up accomplishing, and render them equivalent to giving an onion to a beggar. Father Zosima’s brother goes onto say:

“The first birds of spring were flitting in the branches, chirruping and singing at the windows. And looking at them and admiring them, he began suddenly begging their forgiveness too: ‘Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have sinned against you too.’ None of us could understand that at the time, but he shed tears of joy. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there was such a glory of God all about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky; only I lived in shame and dishonoured it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.’

‘You take too many sins on yourself,’ mother used to say, weeping.

‘Mother, darling, it's for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can't explain it to you, I like to humble myself before them, for I don't know how to love them enough. If I have sinned against everyone, yet all forgive me, too, and that's heaven. Am I not in heaven now?’”

One might ask, how can Zosima’s brother be in heaven ‘now’, when all around him in the world is destruction, war, and genocide? In a word, when there is so much ‘suffering’? I believe Father Zosima’s dying brother was not referring to the whole world, but those little interstitial spaces in which we experience the mysterious conjoining of heaven and earth. Where the peace and justice of God has spilled into our earthly reality, where God’s kindom has been performatively prefigured. In Zosima’s brother’s case, that meant being forgiven by everyone around him as he died — reconciliation. That’s the true heavenly nature of forgiven sins. The end of alienation, as Paul Tillich would have it. Some people call it ‘atonement’.

This interstitial conjoining of heaven and earth is beautifully hinted at in one of the most beautiful passages in The Brothers Karamazov, which immediately follows Alyosha’s vision of the Marriage at Cana, where Christ’s first miracle was to help bring gladness to human hearts:

“his soul, overflowing with rapture, yearned for freedom, space, openness. The vault of heaven, full of soft, shining stars, stretched vast and fathomless above him. The Milky Way ran in two pale streams from the zenith to the horizon. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedral gleamed out against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers, in the beds round the house, were slumbering till morning. The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars....”

Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love it for ever and ever. “Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears,” echoed in his soul.”

This passage reminded me of Zizek describing the spirituality of Tarkovsky’s cinema:

"In our standard ideological tradition, the approach to Spirit is perceived as Elevation, as getting rid of the burden of weight, of the gravitating force which binds us to earth, as cutting links with material inertia and starting to “ﬂoat freely”; in contrast to this, in Tarkovsky’s universe, we enter the spiritual dimension only via intense direct physical contact with the humid heaviness of earth (or stale water) —the ultimate Tarkovskian spiritual experience takes place when a subject is lying stretched on the earth’s surface, half submerged in stale water; Tarkovsky’s heroes do not pray on their knees, head turned upward, toward heaven, but while intensely listening to the silent palpitation of the humid earth."

This is precisely where Alyosha is as he embraces the ground and “waters the earth with tears of joy”. This is what it means to lie prostrate before God. When Alyosha was out there that night the narrator said that “The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars.” Here lies the heart of Advent and Nativity — a keen awareness of little fragments of God’s kindom that show up on earth as they are in heaven. Incarnation reminds us that the yearning of Christians is not to escape the embodied reality of earth into a disembodied fantasy of heaven. It is to participate in reconciliation and the eradication of oppression, which is what constitutes God’s presence here on earth. That’s at the heart of Atonement, which I hope to discuss in my next post.

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fuckyeahfatpositive · 7 years ago

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How do I conquer my fear of my own body? I want to be sexually active but it’s so hard to just have sex! Like bam! Vuola! I’m in high school, boys are immature, and I kind of hate my body. I’m 250 lbs and 5’6 (thank god for my height bc I look 50 lbs thinner and can wear clothes from the mall still) I know I probably sound so awful but I’ve always had a problem with my body, but I just want to love myself and be confident so I can get out there. Where do I start?

I wish I had a short, simple answer for you, but all I have is some advice you may have heard before and book recommendations. Also since you’re still in high school and therefore probably a minor, I’m not super comfortable talking about how to help you have sex. I will say that, as I remember, high school boys have a tendency to be focused on rounding the bases so they can brag to their friends more than anything else, so you might not really be missing out by not having sex with them.

The advice: Focus on what you like about yourself - and not just in regards to your appearance. That way when are feeling down about your body, you can shrug it off and say “So what? I’m a great person anyway.”

Do things that make you feel good about your body. Spending time in your underwear or naked (in your bedroom or bathroom in private!) can be super helpful at making you more comfortable with how your body looks and feels. Also masturbation helps - figuring out what you like and feeling confident in your own sexuality helps for when you do get to the point of doin’ the do with someone else.

The book recommendations: Big, Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them) by Hanne Blank

Fat Sex: The Naked Truth by Rebecca Jane Weinstein

FAT!SO?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size by Marilyn Wann

I hope this is helpful! And if anyone else has advice or recommendations, please share :)

~raggedyanndy

#advice #Anon #ask and ye shall receive

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videoviralfeed-blog · 8 years ago

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Beth's Tequila Lime Chicken Fajitas

– Hey guys, today I’m gonna share with you a really fabulous dinner idea if you are summer entertaining and you need to feed a crowd.

It is my tequila lime chicken fajitas.

I love this idea because you can pile everything on one big platter, bring it to the table, and let your guests dig in.

The meal becomes really interactive and fun and it’s just something different than the same old hamburger and hotdogs.

Let me show you how to put it together.

So the first thing we’re gonna do is create the marinade for the chicken.

Now, the nice thing about marinating with tequila and lime is it doesn’t take very long to do the trick.

So you really only need to marinate those for 20 to 30 minutes.

You let that chicken sit too long in the lime juice, the acid will actually start to cook it, almost like crevice, and you’ll end up with chicken that has a bit of a rubbery texture, so really 30 minutes will do the trick.

Add the zest and juice of one lime.

Three tablespoons of tequila.

Now, if you don’t drink, you could leave the tequila out and I would just add another lime.

Two tablespoons of olive oil.

One garlic clove that has been minced.

A quarter teaspoon of salt.

A half a tea spoon of ground cumin.

And some red pepper flakes to taste.

And I’m also gonna add two tablespoons of freshly chopped cilantro.

And that’s all you have to do.

And then just stir this all up until nice and combined and then we’re gonna add three large chicken breasts.

Now, I do like to use either pounded yourself, or you can ask your butcher for cutlets.

That way the chicken will be thinner and it’ll cook a lot quicker and it works a bit better for fajitas.

Then we’re gonna let this chicken just hang out in this marinade for about 20 to 30 minutes.

You can pop it in the fridge and then we’re gonna prep the rest of the ingredients.

Okay, so to prep our vegetables, we’re gonna be using a cast iron skillet.

The reason I like to use cast iron is because you’re gonna end up getting those nice char marks on the peppers and the onions, much like you would if you ordered fajitas in a restaurant.

We’re gonna add a little bit of olive oil to the bottom of the pan.

So we’re gonna sauté up the onions first and then we’re gonna add our peppers.

I like to do a mix in the summertime of red, yellow, green, whatever you have will do.

And then we’re gonna season with salt and pepper and a little bit of dried oregano.

And then just let them cook.

And in fact, the least amount of time that you can spend stirring them, the better because then they will get that nice char marks.

And then once they are cooked, you can kind of just set them aside.

We’re gonna reheat them right before we serve them, but once they’re tender, just turn off the flame and put them to the back of your cook top.

So this dinner works really well either on an outdoor grill or an indoor grill.

And then we’re going to take our chicken out of the marinade, and I would just pat it down a bit to make sure that you’re not taking like soaking wet chicken and putting it on a grill because then it’s just gonna steam up on you and you’re not gonna get those beautiful char marks.

In fact, if you wanted to put a little bit of olive oil just on the chicken, that’s a good thing to do ’cause it’ll help it become nice and golden brown.

And then we’re just gonna grill our chicken for about five to seven minutes on either side, just until it’s cooked through.

And then once it is cooked, you’re going to remove it and place it on a plate and just allow that chicken to rest.

We don’t want to cut into right away because if we do, all the juices will spill out and we’ll end up withal dry piece of chicken.

So just let it rest and keep those juices intact because we want to grill our tortillas.

See how well all of this works out? The timing is everything when you’re entertaining.

You want to grill, I would say, anywhere from eight to 10 tortillas.

I really like to use those uncooked tortillas because I think they’re so chewy and delicious, a little bit more gourmet for something like this.

As those tortillas are done, you can start to place them on your platter and just kind of fold them over and that way it’ll make it really easy for guests to assemble their little fajita tacos once everything’s ready to go.

So while you’re grilling your tortillas, this is a really good time to dispatch one of your friends who comes in the kitchen and asks what they can do to make some homemade guacamole because this is really good served with my chunky guacamole.

And I’ll leave you that recipe in the description.

At that stage you wann are heat your peppers quickly, or you could even serve them at room temperature, up to you.

And then you’re gonna place those next to your tortillas.

And for the chicken I like to slice that just kind of on the diagonal.

Try to keep it intact ’cause then it makes it really easy to just slide your chef knife under the chicken and transfer the whole lot onto the platter.

And then you can take your little lime wedges and tuck the limes inland around the chicken.

And then for a finishing touch, I do like to take just some fresh sprigs of cilantro and place that on top of the chicken.

See, and you have one festive looking platter, ready to go.

And let all your guests serve themselves.

They can take a tortilla, put some of that chicken and the peppers, and of course, a big dollop of homemade guacamole.

It is quite a sensational dinner party food that is fun and interactive.

It’ll get everybody helping in the kitchen.

And it’s just another way to use your grill this summer that’s a little bit more fun and festive.

I hope you guys give this one a try and let me know what you think.

#chicken #Fajitas #Lime #Tequila

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kimmiecupcakes · 8 years ago

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Tolle Nachricht über das Topic Verlobungsringe

New Post has been published on https://www.festivaldd.ch/bentwood/bentwood-holzringe-schweiz-vs-holzschmuck-in-winterthur/

Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz Vs Holzschmuck In Winterthur

Green Cross Schweiz setzt sich für die Bewältigung der Folgeschäden aus Industrie- und Militärkatastrophen ein und für die Sanierung von Altlasten aus der Zeit des Kalten Krieges. Im Vordergrund steht die Verbesserung der Lebensqualität von Menschen, die durch chemische, radioaktive und andersartige Verseuchungen betroffen sind, sowie die Förderung einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung im Sinne von Kooperation statt Konfrontation unter Einbezug aller von einem Problem betroffenen Kreise.

Wir dass heißt meine Wenigkeit Neparo de Christo, und ein halbes Dutzend Initiatoren die hier nicht genannt werden möchten, die mit etwas mehr oder weniger Geld das Projekt LEBENSINSEL PARAGUAY ins Leben gerufen und dieses bis heute aus eigenen Mitteln finanziert haben.

PalladiumBentwood-Holzringe vs Weissgoldeheringe : Neue Hintergrundinformation zum Thema hochzeitslocation

Wir fertigen für Sie aus Buche, Ahorn und anderen Sonderhölzern unterschiedlichste Produkte für Kinder und Erwachsene. Gerne auch nach Ihren Wünschen und Vorstellungen! Sei es ein Memohalter oder unsere beliebten Schnullerkettenclips, wir setzen überall unseren hohen Maßstab an, um Ihnen eine gleichbleibend überzeugende Qualität garantieren zu können.

Naja eine Anleitung dafür kann ich deshalb leider nicht schreiben. Aber vielleicht kennst du ja noch andere passenden Blogartikel mit einer Anleitung für schöne Weihnachtsdeko. Denn apropos passende Blogartikel: Diese Linksammlung ist eigentlich noch gar nicht fertig.

Bastele den Deckel. Klebe die verbliebenen sechs 240mm-Stücke oben auf dem Rahmen aneinander. Wie vorher auch wechselst du wieder zwischen lackiert und unlackiert. Die Teile werden genau in die Lücken passen, die durch die versetzten Endstücke entstanden sind.

Wir gehen von Zeit zu Zeit auf das eine oder andere Thema ein. Leider nicht immer sofort und gleich, da es vereinzelt leider immer wieder zu Nachahmungen unserer geschützten Produkte kommt. Diese Nachahmungen erreichen zwar durch massive Abmahnarbeit und Zollkontrollen nur vermindert den Markt, da jedes Produkt der Aldecor Manufaktur urheberrechtlich geschützt ist, aber sie sind allgegenwärtig.

Aufgrund einer 100% Steuerfreiheit auf alle Erträge (inklusive des Kapitals) sowie einer Durchgriffssicherung auf allen ECN Forex Tageshandelskonten steht der Broker und Partner der deutschen und schweizer Finanzdienstleistungsindustrie hoch im Kurs.

Set of six Arne Jacobsen Ant chairs Model #3100 with matching drop-leaf table. Manufactured by Fritz Hansen, 1950s label. Table has a custom piece of glass if desired. PLEASE NOTE – Parking lots are posted. We tow non-stickered cars. Please contact the office to determine the best times to view apartments so you do not get towed. Hinweis: Ihre E-mail Adresse ist nur für den Admin sichtbar, andere Mitglieder/Benutzer können es nicht sehen.

Shop Online: At Huset Melbourne we pride ourselves on providing the most efficient customer service, always placing the satisfaction of our customers as our top priority. We have created an easy online shopping process for the customers that wish to have our unique bentwood chairs delivered right to their doorstep. Our website allows you the opportunity to place the items in an online cart, followed by a secure checkout process. Once the order has been placed, we guarantee safe and prompt shipping of all items.

Quality: The best part about selecting a classic design is knowing the immaculate standards with which it is built. Michael Thonet’s designs have been crafted by the same factory for over a century, ensuring that the quality with which they were first designed has persevered throughout time and continues to deliver a calibre of furniture unrivalled by any other. Rarely are you able to find a collection that can not only stand the test of time as far as durability, but also remain relevant among the constantly emerging trends of interior design.

Die Schweizer Nationalmannschaft bestreitet vom 6. bis 8. Januar den 45. Yellow Cup in Winterthur und danach am 13. und 14. Januar ein Dreiländerturnier in Wien mit zum Link Spielen gegen Österreich und Tschechien. Neben den traditionell Schweizer Industriezweigen wie Uhrenherstellung und Lebensmittelherstellung gibt es auch Stellenausschreibungen für die Pharma- und Chemie-Branche, Gastronomie und Baugewerbe. General Hans Herzog war während des Deutsch-Französischen Kriegs (1870/71) (→ Schweiz im Deutsch-Französischen Krieg ) für den Schutz der Landesgrenzen verantwortlich. Neben den traumhaften Steuerbedingungen warten in …WEITER Schweiz natürlich auch traumhafte Lagen auf reiche Einwanderer.

Als Hilfsorganisation legt World Vision Schweiz den Fokus weltweit darauf, die Lebensumstände der Kinder nachhaltig zu verbessern Dafür setzen wir uns mit international anerkannter Kompetenz in den Bereichen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit sowie Not- und Katastrophenhilfe ein. World Vision hat Konsultativstatus bei der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) und arbeitet bei Nothilfeprogrammen mit dem UN-Hochkommissariat für Flüchtlinge (UNHCR) sowie dem Welternährungsprogramm (WFP) der UNO zusammen. Wir setzen uns sowohl auf globaler Ebene mit Vertretungen in New York, Genf und Brüssel, aber auch auf lokaler Ebene bei Behörden und Regierungen dafür ein, dass die Kinderrechte eingehalten und umgesetzt werden.

Neben ganz viel weiss, passt auch schwarz super zu einer minimalistischen Deko. Ein ganz tolles DIY in schwarz weiss habe ich auch auf dem Solebich-Blog gefunden. Die liebe Julia von hat ein Kissen mit einem Hirschgeweih bestickt und stellt nicht nur die Anleitung, sondern auch die Vorlage zur Verfügung.

The furniture of the time was usually made from flat pieces of wood with numerous joints disguised by elaborate carvings, but Thonet rejected the traditional methods and looked instead for simpler and more economic means of production. He used bent veneers glued together and held in jigs, but this was labour-intensive and the wood could only be bent in one direction. By further cutting, twisting, and rasping it became possible to obtain three-dimensional bends with oval sections but it was the need to eliminate the glues which tended to dissolve in hot damp climates that led to the breakthrough.

Schon seit längerem schleiche ich um das Thema Pflanzenampeln herum und wie ich meine hübschen, kleinen Sukkulenten zum schweben bringen könnte. Schnell landete ich bei Makramee. Das ist eine Knüpftechnik, die viele von euch bestimmt noch aus ihrer Kindheit in Erinnerung haben. Ich jedenfalls denke sofort an Blumenampeln aus den Siebzigern mit gewohnungsbedürftigem Geruch und kratziger Struktur, oft in der gleichen Wohnung kombiniert mit einer geknüpften Eule an einem Holzstab als Wandbild.

Bentwood: Holzringe mit Mooreiche oder Nussbaum vom Goldschmied – Ausgefallen dürfen sie zur Heirat sein

Sattel und Zaum wurden von einer römischen Reiterreenactmenttruppe gesponsert. Das Pferd gehört Nina Büsser die mit Yves Rüttimann befreundet ist. Die Centurionenausrüstung bestand schon seit langer Zeit und musste nur noch kombiniert werden. Anhand originaler Fragmente von Grabsteinen konnte ersehen werden wie Reiter zur Zeit der Römer ausgesehen haben. DasTraining mit dem Pferd Juan begann schon im Frühjahr 2014.

Du wunderst dich über den Name Porã Ité? Ich bin in der argentinischen Provinz Corrientes geboren und in einer kleinen Stadt im tropischen Norden aufgewachsen. Der Name ist eine Homage an meine Wurzeln. Er ist in der Sprache der Guaranies geschrieben, der nordöstlichen Ureinwohner. Porã bedeutet schön, während Ité für Authentizität steht; Ich möchte, dass die Menschen genau das in meinem Designs sehen.

Auch darf das Outfit nicht zu bunt wirken, denn sonst macht man sich zum Clown: Bunte, lässig fallende Kleider kombiniert man mit einfarbigen Accessoires und Schuhen. So liegt man richtig und der Gypsy Style wird nicht zum Karnevals-Look degradiert.

Auch müssen wir nicht betteln gehen, wie jüngst der Pressesprecher der Piraten, auch müssen wir keinen Wasserkopf pflegen und versorgen, auch zum Anziehen haben wir genug. Unsere Verwaltung wird nicht XXL sein, sondern unsere Politik. Update: Ich habe den Adventskranz bei Westwing auch noch mal eine Spur günstiger gefunden und auch sofort bestellt. Ich bin gespannt, wann er ankommt. UV-aktive Farbe für einen Öko-Drucker , der bereits gedrucktes löschen und das Papier neu bedrucken können soll. Wir werden sehen was die Zukunft für uns bereit hält. Ich nutze jetzt einfach mal diesen Kommentar um meinen Hut in die Runde zu werfen.

Mülltonnenboxen aus Kunststoff sind eine weitere günstige Möglichkeit, die Mülltonne zu verstecken. Auch diese Boxen sind sehr preiswert. Durch die Verarbeitungsmöglichkeiten von Kunststoff sind viele verschiedene Modelle verfügbar. Dadurch ist für fast jeden Gartengestalter etwas dabei.

They might be too thick to bend. Try to hold one of the strips (one that hasn’t been boiled) in some steam and see how it bends. If it doesn’t… you might be stuck making something flat with the dyed veneer (like micarta). You could try sanding the dry veneer to make it thinner and more flexible, but I’m not sure how much the dye has penetrated the wood. I like the natural color of wood and haven’t worked with dyed veneer, unfortunately. I suspect they might select less pliable wood for dyed veneer, since they expect people to laminate it together in flat layers (often to make a block that can be lathe turned).

#Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz News Holzringe #Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz oder Weissgoldfeier-Story Holzringe

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vegan-ftw · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Mademoiselle Ka: Eheringe-Tipps

New Post has been published on https://www.festivaldd.ch/bentwood/bentwood-holzringe-schweiz-vs-holzschmuck-in-winterthur/

Aktuelle Neuigkeit über das Topic Verlobung

Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz Vs Holzschmuck In Winterthur

PalladiumBentwood-Holzringe vs Weissgoldeheringe : Neue Hintergrundinformation zum Thema hochzeitslocation

Bentwood: Holzringe mit Mooreiche oder Nussbaum vom Goldschmied – Ausgefallen dürfen sie zur Heirat sein

#Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz News Holzringe #Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz oder Weissgoldfeier-Story Holzringe

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visualresort-blog · 8 years ago

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Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz Vs Holzschmuck In Winterthur auf Mademoiselle Ka: Eheringe-Tipps

Neues Posting auf https://www.festivaldd.ch/bentwood/bentwood-holzringe-schweiz-vs-holzschmuck-in-winterthur/

Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz Vs Holzschmuck In Winterthur

PalladiumBentwood-Holzringe vs Weissgoldeheringe : Neue Hintergrundinformation zum Thema hochzeitslocation

Bentwood: Holzringe mit Mooreiche oder Nussbaum vom Goldschmied – Ausgefallen dürfen sie zur Heirat sein

Tolle Neuigkeit zum Thema Verlobung

#Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz News Holzringe #Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz oder Weissgoldfeier-Story Holzringe

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meandmiworld-blog1 · 8 years ago

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Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz News Holzringe, Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz oder Weissgoldfeier-Story Holzringe - Mademoiselle Ka: Eheringe-Tipps

New Post has been published on https://www.festivaldd.ch/bentwood/bentwood-holzringe-schweiz-vs-holzschmuck-in-winterthur/

Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz Vs Holzschmuck In Winterthur

Modische Neuigkeit zum Thema Verlobungsringe:

PalladiumBentwood-Holzringe vs Weissgoldeheringe : Neue Hintergrundinformation zum Thema hochzeitslocation

Bentwood: Holzringe mit Mooreiche oder Nussbaum vom Goldschmied – Ausgefallen dürfen sie zur Heirat sein

#Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz News Holzringe #Bentwood-Holzringe-Schweiz oder Weissgoldfeier-Story Holzringe

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