{"id":483,"date":"2010-12-31T15:17:41","date_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:17:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html"},"modified":"2010-12-31T15:17:41","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T15:17:41","slug":"favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html","title":{"rendered":"Favorites of 2010: Who Decides Defective? and a Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This past month, I had two posts published in other venues:<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/who-decides-defective.html\">Who Decides Defective?<\/a>&#8221; an op-ed about a new method of in-vitro fertilzation, published in the Hartford Courant.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I also had another post on Motherlode, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html\">A Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving<\/a>,&#8221; about the ways to celebrate materialism at Christmastime.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Happy New Year, everyone!&nbsp;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past month, I had two posts published in other venues: &#8220;Who Decides Defective?&#8221; an op-ed about a new method of in-vitro fertilzation, published in the Hartford Courant.&nbsp; I also had another post on Motherlode, &#8220;A Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving,&#8221; about the ways to celebrate materialism at Christmastime.&nbsp; Happy New Year, everyone!&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability","category-down-syndrome","category-faith","category-family"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Favorites of 2010: Who Decides Defective? and a Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Favorites of 2010: Who Decides Defective? and a Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This past month, I had two posts published in other venues: &#8220;Who Decides Defective?&#8221; an op-ed about a new method of in-vitro fertilzation, published in the Hartford Courant.&nbsp; I also had another post on Motherlode, &#8220;A Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving,&#8221; about the ways to celebrate materialism at Christmastime.&nbsp; Happy New Year, everyone!&nbsp;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-31T15:17:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"amyjuliabecker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Favorites of 2010: Who Decides Defective? and a Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving - Thin Places","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Favorites of 2010: Who Decides Defective? and a Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving - Thin Places","og_description":"This past month, I had two posts published in other venues: &#8220;Who Decides Defective?&#8221; an op-ed about a new method of in-vitro fertilzation, published in the Hartford Courant.&nbsp; I also had another post on Motherlode, &#8220;A Spiritual Defense of Gift-Giving,&#8221; about the ways to celebrate materialism at Christmastime.&nbsp; Happy New Year, everyone!&nbsp;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html","og_site_name":"Thin Places","article_published_time":"2010-12-31T15:17:41+00:00","author":"amyjuliabecker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/12\/favorites-of-2010-who-decides-defective-and-a-spiritual-defense-of-gift-giving.html","name":"Favorites of 2010: Who Decides Defective? 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}