3 More Reasons to Kiss "Dating" Goodbye

It's the morning after...after our local elections, that is. I work at avoiding overt references to politics here--well everywhere mostly--because it rarely serves my purpose. And probably like you, I can't stand to follow all the news of the day for its own sake. But as an occasional player in the game of ideas, I value the opportunity it presents for me to think about what I think and how I got there (and to pay attention to current trends in an effort to avoid embarrassing my kids and grand kids).

In fact, the 1990's (speaking of current...) Sister Act anthem instructs:

"If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna go somewhere, 
you better wake up and pay attention..."  

So, for instance, a while back the Washington Post published a guest piece by someone who described himself as liberal, writing on why a certain round of tax changes didn't look as attractive as many of his colleagues at first thought. Seems that when it was discovered who was holding the football at the bottom of the pile, the other team had it. Alas, the middle class that the changes were supposed to protect, (that's apparently both of us...) is really the loser. I wouldn't know that if I wasn't paying attention...not that that makes me somebody or gets me anywhere at all...!

It Keeps It Friendly
Jeff Goins, who is also concerned with being somebody, getting somewhere and paying attention, says in his post 25 Writing Tips for Beginning Bloggers, that he omits the date from blog posts, that it's a plus..

"Write timeless material," he says, "that does not get dismissed as irrelevant out of the chute."

This is an epiphany for me for this reason: One of the advantages of giving up dating is that I can honestly explore some controversial subject without sparking a round of shots regarding a current event, activity that equals a pointless gunfight resulting in a smokescreen that obscures real issues. And that leaves dead bodies strewn about the battlefield where the root cause of the conflict remains conveniently undisturbed. (And no I'm not referring necessarily to gun laws...though one might reasonably infer such a relationship...) It's just that I'm no good as a lightning rod for opposing points of view, given my bevy of friendships on the political continuum.

It Doesn't Grow Old

My thoughts tend more toward the general underpinnings of things than the mechanisms and tangible outcomes of their implementation. And really, that's good, because details are not my forte. For example, you do NOT want me crunching the numbers necessary to balance anyone's budget--though I can argue all day for the importance of having one. I prefer putting my energies into something more philosophical than the last round of line-item veto threats, not simply reacting to shrapnel that flies when an issue surfaces revealing a foundational disagreement, a systemic divergence.

It Builds Long-Term Relationships

Losing dates has a residual effect: It forces me to think about whether what I contribute might be anywhere near as relevant in May as I believed it might be in, say, November.
And that causes yet another pleasant ripple in the pond: it requires that I stay on substantial topics and focused on the theme I've chosen, which is always harder than it seems. 

There you have it. That's why I love the idea of dateless posts. I can comment on the Superbowl in August or canning apricots in December or the ineptness of Congress. (Wait. That's timeless anyway...)

Now, along with being clueless (as occasionally alleged), I am opting for dateless in an effort to become timeless.


What's your view on "dating"?

Do the Preachers of LA know about this?

“Christ Jesus, though his state was divine, did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave and became as human beings are.”

A friend recently asked if I had seen Preachers of LA, a reality show about the lives of a handful of mega-church TV preachers. I hadn’t but as of this morning I am educated. Ironically, I ran across the above quote from my daily meditation just prior to locating the celebrity crew online.

Maybe it’s just me but I’m having a little trouble reconciling the two. Hmmm.



*(From www.prayasyougo.org. Oct 22, 2013. Paraphrase Phillipians 2)

"Ethel! You get your clothes on!": How the Mundane Becomes Sacrifice and Sacrament

Mundane
Getting dressed in the morning is painful for me.
It is also sacrificial, sacramental.
It integrates physical and spiritual realities in a way nothing else does.

Maybe you're like me. I hate stopping what I’m doing to start something else. This includes sleeping.
(And it only applies to intention, not distraction--in which case, starting something else is easy!)
But if I must stop sleeping, instead of getting up and dressed, I would rather begin writing down thoughts with which I waken, or read something that currently has my attention. Books, pen and paper are always stacked next to my bed on the blue chair, a relic of my grandfather’s homestead, which serves as my nightstand.

What could be wrong with this?, I defend myself. Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way that it’s a necessary practice, to write three pages every morning. I’m not sure, though, that waking at 7:15 and sitting up in bed writing and reading until 11:29 (which sounds better than noon...!) is what she had in mind.

Nonetheless, from this hallowed space, as I have listened to construction and the rest of country life taking place outside my open window, I have also:
-- Conducted the business of afterschool transportation with my grandson via text
-- Facebook messaged a friend with a passage from my reading which I think she will find
           helpful to her book project
-- Practiced 30 minutes of centering prayer
-- Worked on an upcoming retreat presentation
-- Planned dinner
-- Written a couple of blog posts

Still. It seems more legit if I’m writing at my desk, makeup on--or at the least dressed, with breakfast and outdoor chores behind me. Instead I’m propped up with three pillows, books/papers/phone strung across the comforter, dental appliance still sitting on the bathroom shelf (which I’ve worn for years, thanks to a teen car crash), and fending off the early September chill in my ever-present black chenille robe.

Eventually there will be tasks for which I will have to be what Mom called presentable.
-- Like dinner at 5:30 with my in-laws and their visiting cousins.
-- Like meeting my granddaughter’s bus at 4 p.m.
-- Like answering the door for the UPS truck.

How can I leave this sanctuary without begrudging the act?
Sacrificially. Sacramentally, I tell you.

Sacrifice
I’m a morning person neither by design nor by conditioning so having to get dressed upon rising just adds insult to injury. For years, as a career musician and minister, my working days rarely started before 2 p.m.—except on Wednesdays when there were meetings scheduled according to bankers’ hours. And the few gigs I held at public schools when I had to be on site at the “crack of early”—a phrase I borrowed from a generous friend who just happens to be my husband, who laughed like a school girl when I told him my required arrival time, and who holds a very different view of both mornings and getting dressed than I.

I could live contentedly in this space between my ears surrounded by authors and ideas. But as wise others have said, art exists to support life, not the other way around. This assumes there are other vital elements to said life, like keeping good tax records, laundry, meeting school busses and eating dinner with relatives.

It’s true. My current work is writing and reading and praying and thinking and creating.
But it’s also dirt, and laughter and exercise, and bills. And [most of] that requires getting dressed.

So I try.

Sacrament
I try to stop sleeping and smile in the morning—through scratchy eyes and monster breath.
And once in a while I remember to say thanks for the increasingly-rare nights of restful sleep.

I try to write just briefly enough to capture what I dreamed or woke up thinking about—
And when I don’t forget, I offer it up as prayer.

I do stumble to the bathroom for whatever needs doing…
…thanking God that it all works.

I try to exercise a bit, stretching my limbs.
Remembering days in physical therapy reminds me to be thankful I can move.

I try to wash my face—usually. And bathe if I didn’t last night.
I give thanks that there are people in my life whom I love, who support and surround and suck
life from me, for whom I will put on makeup and fix my hair…or at least moisturizer and a hat.

I will don whatever is needed for the day’s demands.
I will give thanks for provision and meaningful work to do, even if it’s just tending the tomatoes.

“Present your bodies…a living sacrifice…holy...(wholly?)…acceptable to God…your reasonable service,” I read.

I guess this starts with getting dressed.
Sacrificially. Sacramentally.
So I try.
---------------------------

The Conversation:
What is something you dread doing that you have turned into an act of love?
Is there some ordinary task that could become an extraordinary expression of love if you began to consider it as both sacrifice and symbol?

"I feel the earth move under my feet..." 4 Principles for Paying Attention

August 27, 2013. Did you feel it?
The earth shifted a little on its axis today, not because it’s Mom’s birthday, though she had a way of making the earth move. And not because it always does anyway--predictably, thank God.

Staying Awake
Today it shifted ever so slightly away from summer and toward fall the way a crayon is more green-blue than blue-green. It stepped across the line between summer being more summerish to summer being more fallish. I stepped out my front door and inhaled it.
Deeply. Grapes fragrance the air, the pears are harvested and hops will follow shortly. Sometimes it just smells like skunk but not today. The morning sun was just ramping up, but the rising temperature harbored a hint of cool. An almost imperceptible breeze whispered its secret or it may have gone undetected.


Now and Not Yet
I almost missed August this year—which is alarming because it’s my favorite month. Just one out of twelve. You’d think I could pay attention. I’m not sure how it happened. I suppose it’s the eternal battle I wage against my propensity to live in the not yet instead of the now. Like when my father-in-law used to tell his kids who, like all kids on a long trip, ask “Are we there yet?” with each passing milepost:
“Almost…just over the next hill.”
Of course the next hill, like tomorrow, never exactly comes. Somehow we get there anyway, like I got through August almost without noticing.

Perspective
I’m thinking more these days about the fall—September, October, November—of life, about the second half of the trip. I have help. Last night just before dropping off to sleep, my husband remarked, “Do you know we’re closer to the end of our lives now than we are to the beginning? I confess, I found it less than comforting. I had noticed, actually, since I’m in the throes of menopause and already question on a daily basis just how much closer I am. Plus both my parents have passed on. His, on the other hand, are both in their 80’s and just beginning to experience the salient effects of their mortality. He gets to watch.

Prompts
When I was little and sitting in church, if I was doing something distracting, Mom would snap her fingers so I would snap out of it. My kids say I inherited that gene. Maybe today’s shift was Mom snapping her fingers so I would remember to live now. At the least, she must have had something to do with it.

I wonder if heaven will be like August, or like long trips to Texas; if we’ll all get there and see that we were complaining a lot and not really paying much attention?

What have you missed or nearly missed?
What helps you to pay attention?
How can you welcome these helps into your life...now?

How can James Joyce help keep your ideas from being stolen?

Inspiration comes to me from many random places. Here's the latest.

In How to Read Novels like a Professor (not your average coffee table reading, I suppose, but I currently am...did I mention I'm a bit of a geek?), Thomas Foster says:

"...despite a 20-year gap, [James] Joyce copies [someone else's] style exactly for many of Leopold Bloom's monologues in Ulysses. Joyce finds and capitalizes on a style of narrative by Edouard Dujardin in a novel which he says "lapsed into neglect and was largely forgotten." (Too bad for Dujardin!)

The point is not that what eventually became James Joyce's trademark style was first attempted by someone else. The point is rather that when Jim discovered a gem, he acted in response.

Courage Follows Convergence

             

Convergence: the coming together of two or more things to the same point.*

Convergence is also, for me anyway, a powerful predictor, one key factor in the process of discerning and deciding between possible courses of [hopefully] action. 

When similar streams trickling in from various sources converge, I pay closer attention. You should too.

I DON'T Want To Be Left Behind

(Image: Amazon.com, link disabled)

Like a 2:00 rainstorm on a Florida afternoon, an unexplained cloudburst of tears threatens as I close the book on Brenda Peterson's memoir, "I Want To Be Left Behind."

Its catchy, irreverent title--at least for someone who understands its connotation--indeed caught my eye as I passed by a library shelf weeks ago. Me and my curiosity couldn't resist.

Eschatalogical Switzerland

I actually wrote this piece a month or two back. As you will see in today's and tomorrow's posts, the topic is obviously occupying some space in my thinking (you have to be sleeping under a rock not to have some awareness of all this!), the reasons why becoming clearer tomorrow.  But lest I leave the impression that I'm consumed, it just so happens that my current interest in posting coincides with the current Mayan madness. Correlation does not necessarily equal cause, remember... So here's my meager contribution.

---------------------------------------------

I have many and varied bed fellows these days. That doesn’t mean I’m sleeping around. It means that among my friends are people who view things very differently. These differences are never seen any clearer than in

Medical Center Malfunction

I’m really ticked at my doctor’s office this morning. I raced to be there at the appointed time, 9 a.m., which is nothing to normal people, but to a night owl writer/musician is a feat of considerable magnitude. So at my customary two minutes late I checked in. 

“Oh. You were supposed to be here at 8:45,” she said.

Political Preferences

I rarely state my political preferences. That doesn't mean I don't have them. Yet I have discovered that those who have views opposite my own have, on many occasions, substantive things to say. (Imagine that... !)

It makes me wonder how much closer we might come to effective solutions for the challenges we all face if we actually listened to one another instead of screaming into each other's faces from the bottom of the well--which so far has produced little in the way of rescue.

This quote by John Wesley sums up my attitude about the whole affair and is my favorite contribution to the 2012 political campaign so far. It was posted by a 30 something pastor, a friend of mine who, thank God, gets it.

One Call Away: A Memoir... by Brenda Warner

“When people approach me, they often start the conversation in the same way. ‘Are You Kurt Warner’s wife?’ These days, in answer, I hold out my hand and say, ‘My name is Brenda.’” In this gritty account of the wife of the former NFL quarterback who led three teams to the Super Bowl, Brenda Warner captures that same spirit in writing. She extends a hand, 

"It's the Water..."

Anyone remember the Olympia Brewing Co. advertising slogan from eons ago...

"It's the water, and a lot more"?

(Yeah. I didn't think so.) Seems that can also be the case when it comes to the water we drink.

 

Here's the skinny: 
--Drink 6-8 glasses of water daily. The body needs it for everything.
--Drink bottled, at least temporarily, until you're certain the supply is pure.
--Flush your pipes regularly which means, run the faucet open

Fall's Friday Frenzy

Even if you're not going to school yourself, or have kids who are navigating the delicate re-entry into the educational atmosphere, it's hard not to be affected by the energy surrounding it all. In spite of my good intentions, it seems that sitting down to write gets pushed to the side. (Okay. I confess. It's more likely web-induced ADD.)
In any case, the 8-week program continues. I've managed to...

Winning...

Who doesn't love winning? And when it's stuff you love, even better! Check out this stuff I won that I also happen to love, which is different than that random white elephant you got for being one of the first people through the door at the used mattress sale: (eeew!)

Easiest Salmon Ever; You Have the Right to Infuse

Think it's hard? Think again. I bought a package of wild caught salmon/filleted/skin on, from Costco on Friday. I cut it into serving-size pieces, wrapped each in plastic and paper, popped them, in a ziploc and tossed into the freezer.
To use, thaw in the frig overnight or a couple hours on the counter. (This is probably a good place for a disclaimer to avoid a law suit. I don't know how my mother kept from killing any of her five children, umpteen grands and

Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber

Surprised by “Surprised by Oxford”! Forgive me, but like a reluctant maiden, I was not easily captured. It took me a full 60 pages to fully engage with the author and to fall in love with her story. But fall, I did. Sometimes even the most enduring romances get off to a rocky start. In this memoir of spiritual and romantic awakening by Carolyn Weber, we are guided through the privileged halls of Oxford University, and ushered into the inner life of a young person who is in the process of becoming.

She is…

…becoming a woman, arriving in London with a suitcase of shoes, an engagement ring and high hopes.

…becoming a teacher, a female doctoral candidate at a prestigious institution with rigorous intellectual demands.

Bust a Moooove! (Week 1c)

Walk... salmon... vitamin C... breathe... get flowers...

I have been at the beach with family since I posted last. Staying on track away from home--camping in a yurt and fixing meals over a firepit--was the challenge. Of course, you're already surrounded by nature and glorious air. For food, we packed lots of fresh fruit and some blanched broccoli in the cooler. But just in case you run short, there are delightful organic markets nearby.

I found some things actually easier. For example, just going to the restroom half a block away means you exercise every day (...albeit at 3 in the morning,

Better Than You Think - (Week 1b)

Week 1b: Think about the body's amazing ability to heal; consider things from which you and others have recovered.

I saw the physical therapist today for a shoulder that has ceased to operate like one. Still lying in bed, just that first morning stretch sends me into a pain-induced state of shock which is no way to start the day! And it's downhill from

Really? 8 Weeks to Optimum Health...? (Wk 1a)

                             Week 1a: Eat fresh broccoli twice this week.

Some experts say it takes 21 days--three weeks--to establish a new habit. Opinions differ, but in any case, I know it takes me more than a week. So I'm giving myself three times that--24 weeks, not eight!

I ran across this book at Goodwill a few months back. (By the way, thrift shops are a great place to shop for books if you can't afford new

"Migraines Are What Happens When You're Making Other Plans"

No doubt you've seen this clever axiom, credited to John Lennon...

For the past several years, my experience has been that...

"Migraines are what happens when you're making other plans!"

For instance, I planned a week-long trip recently to a town three hours away