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Monday, 11 January 2010 16:53 |
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"...Twenty-nine weeks into my pregnancy and two months after receiving the devastating news that Caritas Anne, our daughter in utero, suffered from a massive and likely fatal brain tumor, my body went into labor. Due to pregnancy complications caused by Cara’s condition, my labor could not be stopped. All night my uterus contracted and my cervix dilated. At the appropriate time, I began pushing. Cara’s head, swelled beyond the size of that of a full-term infant by spinal fluid and lesion, would not descend through the birth canal. After I was quickly wheeled into an operating room for a cesarean section, I stared at a partition while a team of health professionals wrested my ailing daughter from my body. She did not cry; she barely breathed. And there was nothing I could do to make things right. I couldn’t even touch my child. While another team of doctors worked to intubate and stabilize my daughter, I did what she could not do and the only thing I could do; I wailed..."
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 05:19 |
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A friend and I got quoted (barely) in the local paper after attending the biodiesel co-op meeting a few weeks ago. I was pleased that despite the brevity of the quote, they got it right -- my main interest is the fact that they are planning to produce biodiesel from waste vegetable oil (WVO) instead of virgin soybeans. Click below for the story and a link to the paper. Laryn Kragt Bakker of Avondale said he was previously a member of a biodiesel co-op and had been searching for another one to join.
‘‘My main interest was that they’re producing their own fuel from used vegetable oil,” he said, adding he was intrigued by the production process.
‘‘I’d like to make my own biodiesel now, but I just don’t have the space for it,” said Chris Fuller of Washington, D.C. ‘‘But [I’m] definitely considering joining, especially if they’re gung-ho about producing, and it seems like they are.”
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Monday, 22 May 2006 13:29 |
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Janel was quoted in the Washington Post over the weekend. The article is below and her thoughts on it are here.
...It also includes some theologically traditionalist Christians.
Janel Bakker, 28, a graduate student at Catholic University who attends Washington Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill, an evangelical church affiliated with the Mennonite denomination, said she grew up in a "relatively conservative religious home" where "the big issue was considered to be abortion."
But Bakker, who has attended several rallies against the Iraq war, said she now regards poverty, peace and the environment as important spiritual issues ignored by the religious right. "The religious right has assumed that capitalism is the way to go and is the most moral way to organize society," Bakker added. "Young people are questioning that."
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Monday, 01 August 2005 16:57 |
By Janel Kragt Bakker
Published in Catapult Magazine, July 29, 2005
Sexuality: it provokes within us intense longing, absolute disgust, unrelenting attraction, debilitating dread, indescribable joy, utter repulsion. One does not have to be an expert on the subject to appreciate the power of sex. It is difficult to predict how a person will respond to manifestations of his or others' sexuality--except to say that it most likely will not be apathy or indifference. Human sexual expression can bear the glorious fruits of celebration, joy, intimacy, and worship--or it can spawn the rot of shame, fear, and defilement. It can enhance our humanity, but it can also degrade it.
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Monday, 01 August 2005 16:42 |
Published in Catapult Magazine, July 29, 2005
In a cultural milieu where technology has eclipsed relationships, overt yet often vacuous expression of sexuality pervades culture, and sexual pleasure is perceived not only as a right but as the quintessential experience from which to derive meaning, an alternative vision of human sexuality is badly needed. This conviction drives Marva Dawn?s exploration of sexual ethics. Although she is certainly aware that the topic does not lack for attention among contemporary Christian ethicists, Dawn adds her book to the fray convinced that much of the analysis put forth has been reactionary or inadequate.
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Wednesday, 11 May 2005 00:25 |
Janel is interviewed in the latest issue of Sojourners (June 2005), in an article called "Growing up evangelical," by Stacia Brown.
| Janel Bakker, a doctoral student at the Catholic University of America, learned a similarly "triumphalist" outlook in her Christian Reformed congregation. Although her childhood church promoted civic engagement, sustained immersion in secular culture occurred infrequently. Consequently, Bakker grew up believing there were two kinds of people: evangelical Christians and everyone else - "the unsaved." |
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Tuesday, 30 November 2004 21:17 |
by Janel Kragt Bakker (published in Catapult Magazine, November 2004)
As kids, my siblings and I would play the sadisticyet lightheartedWould You Rather... game on long road trips. You know the one: Would you rather freeze to death or burn to death? Would you rather have all of your hair plucked out strand by strand with a tweezers, or descend down a razorblade-laden slide into a pool of alcohol? Would you rather I flick your ear until we get to Grandma's house or breathe in your face until we arrive?
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Friday, 30 April 2004 21:33 |
by Laryn Bakker (published in Catapult Magazine, April 2004)
"Our stories are inextricably interwoven. What you do is part of my story;
what I do is part of yours." -Daniel Taylor
"Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on me
and treating me badly." -Jorge Luis Borges
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I've often thought that the common idea that authors "play God" as they write about characters and develop their stories does a disservice to God, implying that he's up there writing away, and we scurry along down here as his fingers tap out our next move on the keys.
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