Tuesday, October 26, 2010

The Kindness of Strangers

While looking for books on traveling with children, I happened across this book in the stacks. I was actually at the library alone, so I had time to browse.

It's a compilation of stories by both published and first-time authors about encounters with kind strangers while traveling around the world. With an introduction by the Dalai Lama and a focus throughout on kindness and what binds us together as humans, this book radiated faith in the goodness of people.

A little bit of everything and a fast read, this book would make an excellent companion on a journey or a good escape through the adventures of others for the homebound.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Hole in Our Gospel

Don't let the word "Gospel" throw you off. This book is about social justice, plain and simple. It's about authentic faith. It's about poverty, children, hunger, injustice and what the Church with a capital C is neglecting. It's about the gaping hole in the message of Hope Christians are supposed to be promoting.

Richard Stearns is the current president of World Vision, a Christian based humanitarian organization. In the first part of the book he tells the story of how he was challenged to leave his job as CEO of Lenox, a luxury tableware company, and take the CEO position at World Vision. He is brutally honest about his struggle and eventually realization that "he is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose".

The first part of the book tells Stearns' story and as an avid memoir and biography reader, I thoroughly enjoyed it and appreciated the humility and transparency with which he shared his journey. The second part is a dizzying account of the statistics of poverty and injustice in our world. The third section is a challenge to do something about it.

This book has changed my thinking, or rather solidified my thinking. I've traveled to a third world country. I sponsor two children, one in Bolivia and one in Sierra Leone. We give money to various international charities. These issues are ones I think about...but this book took it to a new level.

Here are a few of the statistics I found staggering, "...AIDS has now left 15 million children behind as orphans. Again, this is a number that is incomprehensible. Picture a chain of children holding hands and stretching out across America. This chain, starting in New York, would stretch all the way to Seattle, back to Philadelphia, back to San Francisco, then east to Washington DC, back again to Los Angeles, and finally to about Kansas City." Can you see those children?

"It is estimated that a child dies every five seconds from hunger-related causes." That means about 12 children died in the time it's taken you to read this blog post to this point.

I could go on with the statistics but it becomes mind-numbing. Stearns does a great job of using word pictures, like the chain of children one above, to make the statistics real. But can we really fathom it? Does it mean anything to us?

Stearns advocates that it should. He constantly puts things in perspective with statistics like this one, "If you make $50,000 per year, you are wealthier than 99 percent of the world! ... If you don't feel rich, it's because you are comparing yourself to people who have more than you do--those living above even the 99th percentile of global wealth. It's also because we tend to gauge whether or not we are wealthy based on the things we don't have...our difficulty is that we see our American lifestyles as normative, when in fact they are grossly distorted compared to the rest of the world. We don't believe we are wealthy, so we don't see it as our responsibility to help the poor. We are deceived."

He also calls the Church to account for its negligence in these matters. He clarifies that not all churches are lacking and that many have done great things. But in general, all could do more. He states, "There is much at stake. The world we live in is under siege--three billion are desperately poor, one billion hungry, millions are trafficked in human slavery, ten million children die needlessly each year, wars and conflicts are wreaking havoc, pandemic diseases are spreading, ethnic hatred is flaming, and terrorism is growing...and in the midst of this stands the Church of Jesus Christ in America, with the resources, knowledge, and tools unequaled in the history of Christendom. When historians look back in one hundred years, what will they write about this nation of 340,000 churches? ... Will they write of ... Christians who lived in luxury and self-indulgence while millions died for lack of food and water?"

The call to action section of the book is full of stories of individuals making huge differences by simply offering what they are able. This one was my favorite: Austin Gutwein, a nine-year-old learned about children orphaned by AIDS. He decided he could do something so he decided to shoot 2,057 free throws on World AIDS day, one for each child orphaned by AIDS that day. He got people to sponsor him and raised almost $3,000. Today, he's raised almost a million dollars. A nine-year old.

I am contemplating what I can do. What more I can do. How I can teach my children to live with compassion, generosity, and genuine faith. I want to get beyond the feeling of hopelessness and find a way to help. Even if it's small, I have to do something. I will not be a self-indulged, apathetic, lukewarm Christian.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Sleeping Through the Night

This book was the only book on infant and toddler sleep that wasn't checked out of the library. That made me feel a little better. Apparently I am not alone in my quest for my baby to sleep all night, or alone in the desire to sleep all night. Or at least for more than three hours at a time.

I've been down this road before. I swore I would never make the same mistakes twice. But then I did. Because the mistakes are easier at the time, and because I was trying to figure out how to get two kids to nap and go to bed, and because I was flying solo a lot of the time.

In my quest about a year and a half ago, I read many sleep books and articles on the internet. I read Ferber and Sears; I read the No-Cry Sleep Solution and the Baby Whisperer; I read Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child, which was my favorite and the approach that ultimately worked for my son.

For those of you who've never had to pry your bleary eyes open for the third time in a night at 4:00 am, I doubt you've given much thought to how to get a baby to sleep. I know I never did. I love to sleep! It's one of my favorite things. Little did I realize how complicated it really can be.

Most sleep books talk about the basic structure of sleep, how it works, etc. So I skipped right on through those chapters. In essence, every human wakes up multiple times in the night. And every human figures out ways to fall back asleep, often without even realizing they awoke (or they have insomnia). Babies begin to associate "conditions" with sleep at an early age.

Parents unwittingly (or in my case, knowingly) cause negative sleep conditions by providing "sleep props" that help the baby sleep and consequently must be there when the baby awakes naturally several times a night. If a baby gets a bottle, or breastfed, or rocked or sung to (you get the idea) to fall asleep, then they expect that at night. Wouldn't you be a little disturbed if you awoke and your favorite pillow and blanket had been removed in the night and placed in the hallway?

Experts disagree about how best to respond to night-wakings. Some advocate straight crying-it-out and others promote a gentler approach. Still others say do whatever it takes to get your baby to sleep as it's your responsibility as a parent. And as a parent, there can be a lot of guilt and angst involved when sleep-training occurs.

Jodi Mindell provides the most moderate, middle-of-the-road approach I've read yet. Basically, you do the sleep-training only when you are putting the child to bed in the evening. After you've established a set bedtime and a bedtime routine (something all experts agree is crucial) then you lay the baby down awake in the crib and leave. Most babies will cry, some will scream. The parent should continue to check in and stay no more than a minute, then leave again, continuing this until the baby falls asleep. On average, the first night babies cry 40 minutes, the second night 60+minutes and the third night 20 minutes. After that most babies will simply fall asleep, maybe with a little crying.

But what is different (and so encouraging if it works) about this book is that the author advocates continuing to do whatever you normally do in the middle of the night to get the baby to sleep. She says within two weeks of sleep training at bedtime, most babies will learn to console themselves to sleep and will begin sleeping through the night.

When we did sleep-training with our son, we did cry-it-out in the middle of the night. It was awful...he screamed for more than an hour (from midnight to one thirty) the first night. Personally, I'd rather go through the crying earlier in the evening when I'm not desperate for sleep. And I also now have a two-year-old that I don't want to awaken from his sister's crying for long periods in the middle of the night.

We've got a trip coming up so now isn't a good time to start, but the book provided several ideas for changing things that I can do now without implementing the full-on training. I feel like this book and this author finally gave me a solution I can live with. Highly recommended.

Friday, October 8, 2010

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

I judge books by their covers. When I'm strolling through the library, I look for interesting covers. With my two little ones in tow, I don't have time to peruse the stacks like I used to. The cover of this book drew me in.

What a fascinating story Heidi W. Durrow has created. Tragedy woven with growing up tied into racial identity. Told from multiple points of view at multiple points in time, this book kept me turning the pages to see what happened next (or had already happened but not yet been revealed).

Who are we really? And what is the deepest kind of love? This book explores those questions in a way that a reader can identify with. Highly recommended.