Singing with tears & pleading in the dark.

A little girl at school has been in a terrible car accident. Her family’s car was hit by a semitrailer as they were driving a few weeks ago. Until now I have had no words to write about it. 

Little Lidia is a beautiful girl! Her and her twin brother were in Kindergarten with my eldest son. These three played together almost everyday despite the language differences. Lidia and her brother repeated at the end of the school year by way of enabling them to develop greater fluency in English. My Dear Siah was pretty sad to go on to Year One without them. He is now in Year 4 and they are in Year 3. 

The car accident occurred in the recent holidays. While the family all sustained minor injuries, Lidia has suffered a great amount of brain damage. We’re all shaken. Her family is devastated. Yet through it they have had so much unwavering faith, strength, hope and reliance on God. They have prayed, we have all prayed for Lidia. We have begged God desperately to heal her, to restore her fully, to return her to her family, to us and to school. We hope and pray for a miracle. We ask that the God of life will give life back to this little girl and be glorified. We hope. 

It’s really hard. I have cried so much, begged and pleaded and simply cannot understand why God would not heal her. He can do it. Anytime He likes. Now….or now…He can. I know it. But as days turn into weeks and Lidia shows only the barest signs of life, we wonder, what is God doing? As people pray and talk about God bringing good out of this my heart cries “Where? Where’s the good?” I can’t see it. 

My little Mmoo (7yrs) prayed for Lidia and said, “God we thank you that if Lidia comes back to school we will be happy and we thank you that if Lidia goes to heaven her family will be happy that she is with you. But we thank you because we will be happy if she comes back to school” and I thought…perhaps either way is good. Terribly devastatingly painfully good. And though the darkness closes in I try to sing through the tears…

But it’s hard. He gives and takes away…and it’s so hard when it’s a child.

So still we pray and plead and beg in what feels like a great darkness and I know my heart refuses to believe how serious Lidia’s condition is…maybe it’s hope…She could still be healed. She could. 

I wish it was still Rebecca‘s month of petitionary prayer so I could say, “Pray with us!” I’ll say it anyway and I think I’ll call it ‘missm’s call to desperate impassioned prayer’. Will you join us? 

 

Adaptation & Appropriation

Gerard Gennette once said everyone who truly loves books must hope at sometime to love two at once, or something like that [actual quote pending – where is that book?]. This love for two texts is a love I hope to instill in the hearts of my extension English class as we study adaptation and appropriation this term. So far I have a short list of possible texts for study, however, I know there are so many more out there and I know you know of them. So I’m making a list and am asking you to help me add to it. So far I have the following:

 

The Taming of the Shrew – Shakespeare

& 10 Things I Hate About You

 

The Odyssey – Homer

&  O Brother, Where Art Thou? 

 

Lady Windermere’s Fan – Oscar Wilde

& A Good Woman

 

Pride & Prejudice – Jane Austen

& Bride & Prejudice

or Bridget Jones’ Diary (Which I hate and thus want to ban from my list. Blah!)

 

Twelfth Night – Shakespeare

& She’s the Man

 

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne

& Tristram Shandy

 

Bridge to Terabithia – Katherine Paterson

& Bridge to Terabithia 

My list contains mostly appropriations because that is what I like best, however, it would be good to have some adaptations on the list as well like, well anything Jane Austen that has then been done by the bbc. Adaptations are interesting because often tiny changes are made to the text to make it relevant for contemporary audiences even though a fairly ‘true to text’ approach is taken. For example, did anyone notice how the teacher in Bridge to Terabithia makes reference to the internet even though the movie is set in the 1970s and this reference, as well as being anachronistic didn’t appear in the original text?

I plan on teaching adaptation and appropriation as a continuum and proposing a range of texts along this continuum for the students to choose from. We will then focus our studies on how changes have been made from the original text and what these changes say about context, audience, worldviews and values.

 

SO, I’m wondering if you can help me add to this list? What are your favourite adaptations and appropriations of texts? What do you like about them?

In retrospect: It’s all about me[!]me[!]

My friend David, who I kinda went to school with – same school though he was about a million years above me…ok 5 or so – but have never really met, tagged me for a meme. And surprise, surprise, it’s all about me.

So, I’m supposed to wade through my past posts and select one representative of each of the following themes (one link/theme, I think): family, friends, me, something I love and anything I like. Pretty much, this is what my whole self-indulgent blog is about but here we go…my selections are as follows:

FAMILY: I have a lovely new Poppy! And more very funny little people. I adore my family. 

FRIENDS: The ones who do things like this and inspire this response are awesome. 

ME: a post I wrote from my old blog – the second one actually… the one I began after deleting the first on some serious but rather impulsive whim – by way of obscure introduction. Here I strangely assert that I am from Bullfrogs and Butterflies – more precisely, the album. Those of you who grew up with the tapes will know what I’m talking about. Oh! How I loooooved Nathaniel the Grublet!

SOMETHING I LOVE: Besides Nathaniel the Grublet… the sea, books, reading, books, coffee, music, beach, family & friends, study, when the weather compliments my mood….oh! How am I supposed to choose ONE thing?

ANYTHING I LIKE: How about reading indulgently and learning through literature.

 

So I cheated. I linked to too many past posts…I’m not one for rules. However, one of the rules I DO like is the tagging rule. So, these people are it – and I don’t mind if you include multiple links for each theme either – Kim, Kim, Ellen, Beck, & Island Sparrow.