This is a bright and wonderful Saturday morning. Here are a few blog-related things that I need to wrap up and also some things that wouldn’t be long enough for their own entries. (I like longer entries. If you are going to come and visit me here on the internet, I would like to make [...]
From the Free Verse Flickr Pool, the poem “Things We Have Lost” by Marla Alupoaicei (which I cannot find online). I focus a lot on the things, the ideals, the people I have lost. I can’t help it. I am a half-empty sort of person. (Bad news: I can’t find my bottle! It went missing [...]
Categories: General
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is [...]
Categories: General
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will [...]
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. -Over the Rhine http://www.flickr.com/photos/dizzygirl/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 I am well aware that being a thirty-something and quoting “Latter Days” on my blog is the ultimate in cliches. But when it comes down to it, I’m not sure I know of any [...]
When I was almost five, my parents celebrated their tenth anniversary. My dad gave my mom a ring with nine diamonds on it. I asked him why it wasn’t a ring with ten diamonds (I was very proud of myself for figuring out the flaw in his plan), and he told me that he had [...]
When I found out about the Around Downtown in 80 Minutes competition that Triad Stage was putting on, I immediately asked Mike to compete with me. He declined. Politely, of course, saying that he’d do it if I couldn’t find someone else. So I called Alisa, who agreed right away. With Scott and Brandi’s help, [...]
Categories: General
Mike has gone skiing with our youth group, so I am on my own this weekend. Unfortunately, I have developed a bit of a cold. I am hoping it’s nothing more serious than that. I have had a low-grade fever for the past couple of days. So the exciting Friday night at my house consists [...]
Categories: General
(This picture reminded me of some old-school Derek Webb, but instead of running across a box of letters, it’s a box of music. Just go with it, okay?) We haven’t done this in a while! — Dear Man on the Next Elliptical, You are coughing or snorting kind of a lot. It is very distracting. [...]
Categories: General
A while back, I read an article that was talking about poor relationships with in-laws and making suggestions about how to “fix” that problem. The article, written by someone with good in-law relationships, was essentially based on the idea that you should check your own attitude first and if you are nice and pray a [...]
Categories: General
Within every subculture, there are things that probably seem meaningless to an outsider, but are important indicators of hierarchy to those within. You see this with school uniforms, when students do whatever they can to indicate their status and individuality. A hairbow, the right kind of shoes, a certain style of hair. (If you don’t [...]
Categories: General
For several years, I was a scrapbooker. I started to say that I was an avid scrapbooker, but I am not sure that’s true. I think avid scrapbookers are the people who buy all the little trinkety things that go on their pages. And that is not me. For me, scrapbooking was always about putting [...]
Categories: General
Life is a constant Advent season: we are continually waiting to become, to discover, to complete, to fulfill. Hope, struggle, fear, expectation and fulfillment are all part of our Advent experience. -Life Is An Advent Season, Connections, 11-28-1993 This was a week that could be called, at best, a bust. We are just not equipped [...]
Categories: General
-A friend of a friend has started a blog for girls to write their reviews of books that they read. If you love hearing what young people have to say about books as much as I do, give it a look (and give them some encouragement in the comments). -Scott Westerfeld’s take on the Amazon/Macmillan [...]
On Sunday, we had our deacon ordination. Two new deacons were ordained, and I was officially relieved of my deaconate duties. At least for now. When the pastor was thanking those of us who rotated off, he mentioned the man who was the deacon chair my first year on the deaconate, our friend who passed [...]
Categories: General
As part of my fall manifesto, I intended to sign up for an art class with several of my coworkers. It ended up not working out because of timing and scheduling, but a few of us have decided to take a pottery class this spring, starting in March. I am equal parts excited and frightened, [...]
Categories: General
“Miracles” by Walt Whitman Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water, [...]
Categories: General
I am sorry that I did not get the CD winners posted yesterday. You would think that the first week after a vacation would be the difficult one. But you would be wrong. Last week was fine. This week has sucked big-time. I mean, there have been some nice things, like eating Mexican food and [...]
Categories: General
I enjoyed this post by Don Miller, which is sort of about what Pat Robertson said about Haiti but which is mostly about being thoughtful about your faith and thoughtful about what it means to respond to people who, it seems, are not being very thoughtful at all. This, for me, was the pertinent quote: [...]
Categories: General,God,Introspection
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created [...]
Categories: General,God,Introspection