Dinner Guests

Flik: Elaine, will you play this game with me? 

If you could have any 4 famous people to dinner who would you chose? 

For me; I couldn't not invite Jesus, obvs. And the Good News is he knows all my other guests. (Since before he formed them in the womb). Died for them, in fact.  

I'm a little bit nervous about meeting Him face to face, a little bit afraid of being exposed, but I'm pleased because it's not just me at this dinner party; and my other guests are going to remember Jesus too, over and above anything I might have (over or under) cooked. 

The other gentleman I'm going to invite is Andrew Klaven because I'm really enjoying his book the Truth and Beauty at the moment. He is a bombastic genius. He has a theory that secular culture prefers the sciences to the arts because science is just materialism by any other name: We no longer experience euphoria on a rollercoaster, we get a dopamine hit; talking therapy is all very well but pick up some antidepressants on the way out... etc. 

A few pages later there's an amazing sum up of all the most famous horror movies of the last millenia, among them, the Omen, the Exorcist, Alien, and he explains how they show that the western psyche is deeply disturbed by women and their reproductive functions. Then he praises The Terminator because unlike Superwomen whose seamless suit (aparently) underlines her sexlessness, Sarah Connor wins the day through her femininity. And he does all of this just to make a point about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, (being a monster not because God was sidelined from the creative process but because woman was....) 

Seriously, It's a trip, and I'm loving it! 

I'm going to invite Mother Theresa, I really think she was as close to being like Mary as I can imagine any person in contemporary times being. Which begs the question why I don't invite Mary... I don't know. I grew up in the 90s. 

Anyway. She doesn't pull any punches, Mother Theresa. Unless you have nothing. Then she is all love. She said (in No Greater Love) I don't want you to hold a fund raiser for my mission. I want you to give from where it hurts. And she said, it's easier to help starving slumdwellers half way across the world, than it is to love that person in your own house, village, family. That person who feels lonely in the same room as you. Ouch. Yes. 

By way of comparing Theresa of Calcutta to Mary, I'll tell you that my favourite story about Mary is Our Lady of the Pillar. It was Mary's first apparition, but it was actually a bilocation, because she was still alive at the time. And she appeared to St James, who was dispairing of the Spanish: that they were not recieving the Good News as openly as he had hoped. Mary said to him (something like), Look here, mate. You don't need to worry about Mr and Mrs Jonny Spanish and whether or not they are open to conversion, so much as you need to worry about getting up each morning and doing the work that you have been called to do. The fruit of the labour is in God's hands. 

And now look at Spain! As converted as they come. 

Lastly Sarah Makenzie, really because I want to be her friend. She runs the Read Aloud Revival podcast. She mentors homeschoolers - that was me, this past academic year, and she wrote Teaching from Rest which basically says, as did Mary in Zaragozza, that as long as you feel God is calling you to the work that you are doing at home with your kids, and as long as you are putting Him at the centre of things and aiming at an education which teaches your kids first and foremost that they each are a beloved child of God, and secondly that they are given into their community to support it and be upheld by it, then you can't really go wrong. Even if [fill in the blank] the toddler won't nap and you've had back to back illnesses all winter and learning to read is hard etc etc. 

Ok so that's my four. They all wrote a book, except for Jesus who was The Word made flesh. 

Your turn. You don't have to have equal numbers of boys and girls. And if you like we can combine forces for a bigger dinner party so that you don't have to invite Jesus again...!