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- JRev8 - Home Run !!!Let me just start off by saying that this is the BEST stroller I have ever owned (owned the Britax B-Nimble, various Graco strollers, and Baby Jogger Mini City). The B-Agile is just that, agile. The three wheel design makes for quick and easy turns with a smooth ride. The break is very functional with one foot easy to push and easy to take-off design. The frame is very very sturdy and well made as I expect nothing less from Britax. The fabric is very easy to clean and also very durable. The shade canopy is just awesome, it is large and does a great job blocking the sun. I love the mesh window at the back of the canopy so I can see my liitle one. The canopy also has multiple levels of adjustment. Instead of just being able to have the canopy way up or down it has various adjustments to have the shade at just the right level. I have a Britax Chaperone baby carrier and when installed with this B-Agile the shade perfectly meets up with the Chaperone's shade giving complete coverage for my baby. It has a great adjustable seat that adjusts to the size of your child. The adjustment process is easy, it has a pull cord to adjust to which ever angle you wish, literally any angle you want and a clip you push with two fingers to release to go back downward. You can lay it almost completely flat for infants and sit it completely up for the bigger kids or down again for naps. When the seat is back all the way for naps, there is a large mesh window in the back which provides great air flow to keep little ones cool while keeping bugs out. The storage space is good with a nice sized bin under the seating area and a large bag/pouch that is attached to the back, it has a zipper to keep things secure. The B-Agile is very light weight and my wife(5'4" 109 lbs)can't say enough about that, very light! Folding is a breeze, push a button on the side of the frame area with one hand while holding a handle in the middle of the seat with the other hand and wah la it's folded up. To unfold there is a clip on the side, pull that and done unfolded. When folded it fits easily in the trunk of our sedan.
There are two things I would have liked but not deal breakers. One I wish it came with some accessories. It came with no cup holders,no tray, or rain shield. Also an adjustable handle would be nice. The rain guard, and other accessories can be purhased, but it would have been nice if it came with at least a Rain Shield. The adjustable handle is not important to me because the current height is perfect (I'm 5'11") but I could see it being a problem for tall people. But really this is the best, I can't say enough about this stroller. I highly recommend this stroller for anyone in the market for one, look no more this is the one! - Paul H. Vanderklay "paulvk" - More than just about how to fix your marriageI've been blown away by so much of what this book presents. It's been one of the most helpful books for me on the question of how human relate not only to each other in intimate relationships but also to the rest of the world. Even though the author is a secular writer I think what he explores is helpful on so many other levels. Here's a blog post I wrote relating some of what I learned from Schnarch with other things I'm thinking and reading.
Amazon struck the link, which I understand so I'll just embed my posting. Hope its helpful. pvk
Intimacy and Desire is the most helpful book I've read on theological anthropology in a long time. That may sound strange because the book is written by a secular sex therapist who bases his findings on science and his experience as a clinician.
The Reflected Self
The phrase in David Schnarch's book that rocked my world was his observation "your first self is a reflected self."
I had to sit and ponder that statement for a few moments. What did that mean? I wasn't sure but I could sense it was important.
I thought about an infant that knows nothing but its own young history outside the womb. It's learning about temperature, sounds, colors, and a whole new tactile world. It's learning how to move its hands, its body, how to find the nipple and how to nurse. It's been hearing and recognizing sounds and voices since before it was born but soon she will learn to focus her eyes and she will come to know faces, especially the faces of Mom and Dad.
In most robot apocalypse movies the crucial launching moment of the plot is the moment of self-awareness. Human beings arrive at this moment early. Soon the baby will learn that she is distinct from Mom and the rest of the world and that she is a self.
The world of "self" for a small child is one of discovery. Soon the child will learn that the child has power to choose, to do, to impact. The child will also learn that she lives in a large world where there is "no", frustration, pain, and other things. The self the child continues to discover and develop is in fact a reflected self. The child can't see or experience the self much apart from others. At first most of the reflection is coming from parents and care givers. Increasingly it starts coming from classmates and friends. Soon it will start coming from strangers.
The Self-constructed, Reflected Self
Why do people think they often need to strike out from their community of origin to "find their selves?" It is because they are looking for more, new and different mirrors than what they've had. Often they will go to a big city because each mirror out there makes the self look a bit different. We are in fact constructing our "selves", our identities from the things we find around us. From our friends, from the stuff around us, from our relationship. It isn't dissimilar from trying on new clothes and looking in the mirror to see how the new clothes make us look. We do all of this implicitly.
One of the major changes in developmental human history is the invention of the constructed identity. People of course have long been doing it but one of the geniuses of our contemporary culture is our capacity to popularize and multiply what in past centuries was only the advantage of the elite. People used to receive a full, rounded identity by virtue of their birth. Your gender, your father's occupation, your class, your caste, your ethnic group, your place of birth, the loves, religions and hobbies of your parents established your identity. You would in term go forward, supplement it, develop it, etc. but for the majority of people the parameters were fairly fixed and the variety of influences that a common person might encounter would be limited.
Identity from a clean sheet of paper
All of this has changed and a good bit of what marks our own social situation is the construction of identities. Certainly many of the received aspects of our identities are still quite powerful and determinative for our outcomes, but part of what is central especially to the American dream is that you can make yourself into whatever you want to be. This cultural ideology is a religion of choice. If you want to this narrative says that you can self-construct or re-construct almost all of the aspects that past generations simply accepted as received.
Choose your gender, your ethnicity, your vocation, your self. You do this by re-arranging the mirrors around you by which you construct your self. You used to have to move to a big city in order to do this, but today you can get most of the pieces you need via the Internet. You can be who you want to be and most of us pretty clearly see that the Army would only be one of a myriad of choices.
Reflected Selves in Intimate Relationships
Schnarch's book is all about how this plays out in the context of marriage. In the initial stages of infatuation and attraction the other is desired not necessarily for his or her self, that self in fact can hardly be seen or known initially. That object of romantic desire is valued for his or her capacity to shape our reflected self. To be in an intimate relationship is to be deeply validated and affirmed and for our hungry, reflected selves this is one of the greatest most powerful drugs we can imagine. Through this object of our affection we see ourselves as valued, as worthy, as loved, as desirable. Our romantic partners become the mirrors that seem to improve and address the failures, insecurities and disappointments of our pasts. (See Harville Hendrix' work on why we pick who we attach with.)
In time we begin to realize that people aren't really the best mirrors from which to construct our reflected selves with. The person, the real person over time begins to assert themselves and we stop receiving the reflected selves that we were first so attached to. Initially there is plenty of accommodating so that both sides can simultaneously self-construct their reflected selves but at some point the whole thing starts to break down. Schnarch sees this not so much as a failure, but rather an opportunity to get beyond your reflected self and to begin to become a more solid, flexible self.
Schnarch's Four Points of Balance
Schnarch asserts that most relationships will break down into gridlock where eventually neither partner can no longer finally finesse their way out of the inevitable impasse and what is required is that one or both people need to develop what he calls the 4 points of balance:
1. Solid Flexible Self(tm)--the ability to be clear about who you are and what you're about, especially when your partner pressures you to adapt and conform.
2. Quiet Mind-Calm Heart(tm)--being able to calm yourself down, soothe your own hurts, and regulate your own anxieties.
3. Grounded Responding(tm)--the ability to stay calm and not overreact, rather than creating distance or running away when your partner gets anxious or upset.
4. Meaningful Endurance(tm)--being able to step up and face the issues that bedevil you and your relationship, and the ability to tolerate discomfort for the sake of growth.
Schnarch, David (2011-07-01). Intimacy & Desire (p. 72). Beaufort Books. Kindle Edition.
Solid selves and the capacity to love (rather than to be loved)
Those of us who live from our reflected selves live the quest to get our partners, our kids, and much of the rest of the world to reflect back to us the self we wish be. This will almost always lead to conflict because people are not mirrors or outfits we try on in order to construct our "selves", they are people, often consumed by their own quest of self-construction.
Part of the irony of the reflected self is that this self has little capacity to love. It has an enormous hunger to be loved, to be affirmed, to be constructed by arrange people or partners perceived to be mirrors around us in such a way as to feed our hunger to be the glorious centers of the universe. We long to be loved but only a more solid self can actually have the freedom and capacity for love.
Mirror Reflecting God's Glory
It is here that I begin to put together Schnarch and CS Lewis. Lewis has a great conclusion to a chapter in Mere Christianity where he says this.
The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were `gods' and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him--for we can prevent Him, if we choose--He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.
Lewis, C. S. (2009-05-28). Mere Christianity (pp. 205-206). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
We were made to be mirrors and our selves our first selves are reflected selves on purpose. I've got much more work to do in working through and assimilating Schnarch's insight but one of the areas I wonder about is not how solid we will become but how singular our self will every become. I think by virtue of the stickiness of our selves we were in fact made for relationship but our flimsy reflected selves are poor ones.
Looking for the only safe, off-shore mirror
Schnarch understands marriage, marriages in which people don't give up, as a great engine for human development. This engine can produce solid people (again, CS Lewis' Great Divorce) who actually have the capacity to love rather than the addiction to constantly attempt to construct their identities by using the people and things around them. That habit of using people and things to construct ourselves is idolatry and we can never grow up and become solid until we stop using.
The irony of the situation with having a reflected self is that I don't think we finally lose it. Learning to become a reflected self from Christ is a similar but safer process, not unlike what the woman in Tim Keller's sermon illustration performed. Grounding our identity in the love and commitment of Christ towards us affords us a more solid self from which we can develop the capacity to love the other here around us and the good and beautiful things that the creator has lavished upon our planet.
Schnarch has a lot of helpful things to say in his book in terms of finding your 4 points of balance, and if I have time and desire enough hopefully I'll write more.