Thanksgiving Reading (for when you've had too much turkey and football for one day)
Best reminder:
Kid President’s 20 Things We Should Say More Often
“I disagree with you, but I still like you as a person who is a human being and I will treat you like that because if I didn’t I would make everything bad. And that’s what lots of people do and it is lame.”
For as we enter the season of consuming to celebrate Christ:
A Boundary is the Best Present You Can Give Yourself This Year
“Consumerism and indulgence have a cost. We need to stop looking at buying gifts as right or wrong. We need to add up the costs of our lifestyles and how our lifestyles impact our time with God and with one another.”
Don’t read if you’re too full to laugh:
It’s Thanksgiving So We Asked Brits to Label the United States – We’re So Sorry, America
Americans Try to Place European Countries on a Map
Thought provoking:
Kids don’t play any more
“‘In play, children make their own decisions and solve their own problems,’ Prof. Gray writes. ‘In adult-directed settings, children are weak and vulnerable. In play, they are strong and powerful. The play world is the child’s practice world for being an adult.'”
The world if there were only 100 People (Infographic)
How To Build Something Out of Nothing
“They asked how much money they had to spend and I told them – ‘not much’. They asked how many trained construction people they would have to help them out and I told them – ‘none’. Then they asked who would train the workers if they could find some and I said – ‘you’. So they asked when they had to finish the school construction by and I told them – ‘Next February’.
THEY LOOKED AT EACH OTHER, LOOKED BACK AT ME, CROSSED THEIR ARMS AT THE SAME TIME AND SAID WITH ONE VOICE: ‘WE’RE IN.'”
Too Much Love
“We act shocked when teenage rape/sexting cases hit the news, or when a forced prostitution ring is uncovered. What blissful and damnable ignorance…Why should we be surprised, when the hymns are of rape, and the liturgy on stage is one of assault?”
Why Poor People’s Bad Decisions Make Perfect Sense
“I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It’s not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn’t that I blow five bucks at Wendy’s.”
What We Get Wrong About Submission
“A woman’s worth is not built around the kind of man she marries, but on who she is as an individual person and female entity. And when a woman has an equal say in a relationship, that coming together of bodies and souls is strengthened in ways that far exceed that of a man doing his best to lead alone.”
What Does it Mean that Most Children’s Books Are Still About White Boys?
“How many people would never consider buying Anne of Green Gables or Island of the Blue Dolphins for their 10-year old boy, but don’t pause before giving a daughter Treasure Island or Enders Game? Books featuring girls are, for the most part, understood to be books for girls. Which is interesting as well because, in addition to there not being enough, books featuring girls as protagonists are disproportionately among the most frequently banned children’s books. In a recent Buzzfeed list of 15 commonly banned books for kids, almost half were about girls. Girls who do things apparently scare a lot of people.”
In which this is also about the men
“Women cannot be the ally our men deserve in the Kingdom of God when we are bowing down in a misguided attempt to lift them up.”
A Spiritual Survival Guide for the Suburbs
“They don’t need me, but I need them. I need a life that is free from the facade of lukewarm vanilla living. I need to measure something other than the length of the grass on my lawn and the shade of paint on the walls of my suburban home. I need to measure my life in things that actually matter. I need to un-Martha Stewart myself until I can actually feel again. Until I can admit my own weakness and laugh at my need for control. Until I can see others for who they really are and stop judging them on what they are wearing or their latest highlights.”