Jun 6
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Stability before mobility.
Proximal stability for distal mobility.
I learned about this while studying to be a physical therapist long, long ago.
These words (proximal and distal) refer to the relative position of things within the body. Proximal means something is nearer to a point of reference, distal means something is farther away from a point of reference. The point of reference is usually the midline (the core) of the body. So… my shoulder is proximal to my elbow. My ankle is distal to my hip. Got it?
So…. proximal stability for distal mobility. The better developed the muscles of your core (back, abdominals, shoulder, hips), the more refined the movement of the distal parts of the body (hands, fingers, feet) can be. This is a guiding principle for therapists who are helping patients recover from physical injury, and is also the premise behind pilates. Great tap dancers need abs of steel. A person recovering from an arm injury has to hold her shoulder in a stable position to button a button with her fingers.
Now. Let’s wax philosophical for a moment. Read more
A Time-less Day
My favorite kind of day is a day without any appointments. No marks to hit. Nothing scheduled. This kind of day almost never happens.
One of my favorite kinds of weather is cool and rainy and mild. Also fairly rare.
Saturday was a time-less, cool, rainy day. It was delicious.
We didn’t actually spend it lounging around in hammocks. We worked on projects and made progress on to-do lists but did it all at whatever pace, the combination of which filled my very soul.
Seriously. Delicious.
Have you had a time-less day recently? How did you spend it?
Review: “I Remember Nothing” by Nora Ephron
I knew this a long time ago, before I knew her name and before I read anything she had written.
I knew this because of the movies.
For a very long time I never really paid attention to who wrote movies, or how movies were created at all. But then DVD’s happened, with their special features and commentaries, and I started paying attention. I learned, for example, who was dreaming up that snappy dialogue I loved so much. I learned the names of the writers and directors who created those great moments for, say, Meg Ryan on screen. Yes… I learned who Nora Ephron is through the special features reel of You’ve Got Mail. Read a book by the writer of When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, and Julie & Julia? Why, yes, thank you, I believe I will.
‘I Remember Nothing… and Other Reflections’ is a collection of essays through which Ephron voices her opinions and convictions about politics, religion, the internet, and food with equal irony. Every topic … pie… New York… her early career in the 1960’s journalism world… each, Ephron treats with trademark humor and shades of poignancy. Think Tom Hanks’ monologue on complicated coffee orders in You’ve Got Mail, but applied to dinner parties and writers and online Scrabble. But the thread running through the entire collection is a slightly wistful commentary on the reality of growing older. Ephron skillfully weaves stories of landmark life experiences (like meeting Eleanor Roosevelt) alongside the admission of having forgotten the details of those experiences, all of which elicits chuckles and grins, never tears.
Throughout each piece, the combination of Ephron’s style and the content she chooses is simply compelling. This is a quick read, perfect for summer. And if you happen to be an audiobook fan, Ephron herself reads ‘I Remember Nothing’, which is altogether wry and delightful.
I highly recommend.
This review was originally posted at Book End Babes.
Women in Worship Podcast
Listen to the podcast…. and feel free to leave comments on the podcast page or back here!
Reading Jesus
The book of Matthew is filled with Jesus’ teachings and his interactions with people. If you have a red-letter Bible, most of Matthew is in red. The faster you move through the book, the more intensely you are drinking in Jesus’ actual teachings.
The first time I read through the entire book of Matthew, I did it over two days and at the end I experienced the most amazing sensation. I missed him. I missed Jesus. Toward the end of the book, when there is more narration and less Jesus-speaking, I got all uneasy, and then when he was gone, I felt a strange sadness. There would be no more red-letter words to read. Read more
the thread of the past: Matthew 1
Every time I read the first chapter of Matthew, I’m struck by how important it must be to trace the connections of the past to the present.
Matthew was inspired by the Holy Spirit to include Jesus’s family tree at the very beginning of his account of Jesus’ life, so, clearly, God wants us to notice.
There must be intrinsic value in us being reminded of how people in the past connect to those alive now… how a cultural past has created a current reality… how my own past has led to my own present.
But for Matthew, a genealogy like this isn’t a ‘wallowing’ experience. There is some serious drama hiding between the lines of this family tree (“Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers“? anyone?), but Matthew doesn’t elaborate beyond his task of tracing the thread. The stories exist elsewhere for us to read; his job is to document the chain, not drag up the brokenness within it. The connections themselves are valuable.
But we still must read the stories, for only then will we understand the phenomenal truth of these people’s lives being linked to the birth of our perfect Savior. We will understand that a thread of broken people who make bad decisions has always been God’s chosen medium for displaying his glory.
In a thread like that, I can find a place to stand.
