Something Old, Something New...

The theme for today's link round-up: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.
  • Something Old
Voting continues for CNN's Heroes contest. And I still haven't tired of plugging Yohannes Gebregeorgis and Ethiopia Reads. Keep voting for him. Why not make it a daily destination when you're catching up on blogs? After all, who wouldn't want to promote an organization making such a positive, tangible difference in the world?

"Ethiopia Reads believes that those who read bloom…and that literacy is the key to improving the lives of this generation of Ethiopians. Our mission is to build a reading culture in Ethiopia by connecting children with books. We do this by planting libraries for children, publishing books in English as well as local Ethiopian languages, and training teachers and librarians to cultivate a love of reading among children."


"The salvation of our country Ethiopia, we have repeatedly stated to you, lies primarily in education. As Ethiopia is one, all Ethiopians are also one and education is the only way to maintain the condition....
We believe that from truth alone is born liberty and only an educated people can consider itself as really free and master of its fate."
--Haile Selassie I,

  • Something New
How about a new cookbook? The Riggs Family, who's adopted children from Guatemala (Abby and Landis) and Ethiopia (Sami), are now offering a cookbook for sale. 

And the proceeds go to a very worthy cause. Earlier this summer, three-year-old Abby was diagnosed with leukemia. All money raised from cookbook sales will go toward paying for her treatment (as the family describes below). 

When we were adopting Abby, Landis and Sami one of the ways we raised money was by creating the adoption cookbook.

We compiled dozens of recipes from the countries and families of adopted children. Salads, appetizers, main dishes, soups, desserts... over 150 pages of great recipes.

We have several cases of the cookbooks leftover from that fundraising effort. We would like to offer them again to do some fundraising for the expenses related to Abby's leukemia. Gas, food, prescriptions, hospitals, doctors, tests... at a time when our income was unexpectedly and dramatically cut, our expenses went up.

But, we don't simply want to ask for money. We want to sell this fantastic recipe book for a price you would happily pay at a book store. The recipes are wonderful, and the pictures of the adopted kids heartwarming.



To purchase the Riggs Family cookbook, click here. 

And if you can't afford it (although it's only $20, so it's a great deal!), you can still support Abby and the Riggs family by praying for them. I'm sure that's the kind of support they value above all others. 





  • Something Borrowed
As seen at The Road To Our Own, a link to an insightful interview of a transracial family (a white mother and her now-adult African-American son). This clip is brief, yet touches upon many important points about race, adoption, and the necessity of "see[ing] the world in color." 



  • Something Blue
(What follows are largely non-adoption-related thoughts, including some thoughts about religion/Christianity. If that sort of thing is not your cup of tea, you may want to stop reading here.)

This week, when I think of "blue," my thoughts tend to be less in terms of color and more in terms of melancholy. In particular, a lot of folks in the adoption blogosphere seem dismayed by a post I linked to a couple days ago, wherein one adoptive mother (a Christian) made an argument for the morality of gay couples adopting...and was promptly lambasted by other Christians in her comments section.  

This reaction was saddening, no matter what your stance on this issue might be. I'm trying to stay nonpolitical here, so I'm not going to delve so much into the issue of same-sex adoption rights but rather into an auxiliary reaction I had to it--one that I think both sides can (and should!) agree with. 

Namely this--that the beauty of Christianity (and the concept that seems to be missing in some of this back-and-forth blog commenting) is the concept of grace. Freely given and unmerited love from God. While we can never match the perfect grace God extends to us, we should aspire to as much--which includes showing grace to those whom we disagree with, even to those we think are sinning.   

Reading these posts has reminded me of a song by one of my very favorite musicians, Sufjan Stevens. Sufjan has the honor of writing the most beautiful song ever penned about a serial killer. Strange plaudits, no doubt, but well deserved! (To download and listen to this song, click here.) 

The song--entitled "John Wayne Gacy, Jr."--sets up a most uncomfortable scenario, one wherein the listener not only sympathizes with Gacy to an extent ("His father was a drinker / And his mother cried in bed /  Folding John Wayne's T-shirts / When the swingset hit his head") but also identifies with him. 

How could one identify with such a horrendous criminal? Sufjan, a Christian, concludes the song by posing an uncomfortable idea: "And in my best behavior / I am really just like him / Look beneath the floorboards / For the secrets I have hid." 

But for grace, we are all irredeemable sinners. We all have ugly secrets hidden beneath our floorboards. Thank God that He can look beyond all our faults. 

May we all learn to be more like Him.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008 | Labels: , , |

 

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