Where my mind is wondering

It was recently pointed out to me that I haven't posted in over a year. I'm not sure why. A lot has happened, and a lot hasn't changed. I have nothing of note to say at the moment, just random offerings, but I think it gives you an idea of where my head is right now.

German theological vocab word of the day: Sitz Im Laben. This is a phrase the German theologians used to shift the focus of reading the bible from a historical reading point of view to that of reading legend. So we aren't looking for the "What is happening in this bible story?" as much as we are looking for the sitz im laben - "Why is this story being told?" An important distinction to make I think. 

-I have just saved you about 100 pages of reading and hours of class lectures... you're welcome.

Random Quote from my music library: "It's not the end of everything it's just the end of everything you know ... head vs heart equals bicycle vs a car."

- Bob Schneider, "Bicycle vs Car" from Lovely Creatures

Alex Quote from Friday: "Are you going to turn that down when we get to school? Cause I'm going to open the door, and I have to live with these people 8 hours a day 5 days a week and I don't want them to think I listen to that stuff... It's YOUR music, not mine."

-We were listening to Nirvana when she said this. Can I just add that it breaks my heart a little that she disowns Nirvana which was my all time favorite band when I was her age. At the same time, that she can't identify with Kurt Cobain's lyrics is probably a very good thing.

Insight from my spiritual director: The most complicated role in life I am tackling at the moment is "mother." That the best thing I can do is to pray for my daughter every day. The best best thing is that I reminder her, tell her, show her that I love her every single day - no matter what. The rest is in God's hands.

- I found this to be really powerful and so I just wanted to pass it on even though I realize you might have theological differences.

On a Political Note: What the hell America? Let's just stop, realize that we are human beings and then start over - this time with dignity and understanding.

I'm back

I completely enjoyed the season of Advent.

For the first time in what seemed like a life time, I my schedule was open and free. When I was at home I could just be at home. Our house had one rule: No Multitasking. It was fabulous.

Christmas morning when Alex and I stumbled out of bed we opened the smattering of presents under the tree and watched the Disney Parks Commercial Parade. It was fabulous.

Christmas night the dull pain that had been nagging on the right side of my back all day turned into a sharp stabbing pain and I was up all night. In pain and sick. Long story short I ended up in the ER the next morning. Longer story short it turns out, I[probably] have "sticky blood." In other words blood is prone to clotting. Probably. This [probably] explains the odd shooting pains that I have been experiencing over the past several months.

I'm now on blood thinning medication. A shot. Thankfully I have a wonderful friend who is also a nurse. Because while the Hematologist was confident I could inject myself with the "short" needle. He didn't take into account how much I hate needles. Hopefully I he puts me on a pill form of the medicine soon. I don't don't if Nurse Curly Locks can inject me every day for the rest of my life. Needles aside, the medicine has worked. I feel better. I'm not in pain. The clot that was in my kidney is probably gone.  They will follow me closely for the next six months to a year and see if this really is what they think it is. And figure out long term treatment options. Apparently once a person has sticky blood they always have sticky blood. [insert gratuitous call for healthcare reform here].

So today, since I was feeling 100 percent normal again I called my sister, the yuppie lawyer, and demanded she take me to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston to see the incredibly wonderful documentary, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey. See this movie. Bring a box of tissues. Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who created and portrays Elmo is an amazing human being. Inspiring.

And since today is New Years Eve, I have to add that I am incredibly grateful for all of the people that have walked across my path this year. The opportunities I have been given have been amazing and challenging. I have gained new knowledge and I have gained a better understanding of who it is I am in God. I look forward to continuing my journey, to continuing to learn how to move over so that God can walk this path with me.

What I need today...

Today my daughter went to our local water park with the youth group at church. And I thought... that's just what I need today of all days - just something fun.

Dream House

Photo by Alex, 2011

I love this house. I love the size, the shape, the red door. I love the way it sits at the end of a long dirt drive way. I love the trees, the monstrous yard. I love that this looks like a cottage in the woods, when really its located in the middle of the city.

This house, my dream house was recently sold. I am now hoping against hope that they owners love this house the way I do. That they will live in this house and make it a home. But I'm afraid that like so many other houses in our city the owners look at this lot and see just that... a lot with land on which to build a McMansion. 

I Love...

* ... that when I complain to my sister, the yuppie lawyer, about the fact that this whole seminary/candidacy process is kicking my butt - everyday I am asked to jump through a previously unimagined hoop that simultaneously puts my job and sanity at risk - the yuppie lawyer just looks at me and says, "You asked these people to torture you. And you can't complain about spending a weekend with Ministers if you are going to become a Minister."

* ... that Alex's reaction to seeing Chicago the Musical live on stage this weekend was, "That was weird."

* ... that the long tough battle for marriage equality if finally over in New York State. "In New York alone – there are approximately 10,600 same-sex couples raising more than 21,000 kids. Marriage will not only help provide children some measure of legal security, it sends a strong message to them that their families are recognized, validated and valued by society." - Family Equity Council.

* ... that it is so hot here in the swamp I find my self drenched in sweat after two minutes of playing Rumi Cube outside and drinking wine.

* ... that my friend Leigh turned 96 - yes 96! - which gave us all an excuse to play Rumi Cube and drink wine outside in the swamp.

"Oh, and one more thing..."

 This man. This wonderful man, Peter Falk, died yesterday afternoon. I just got off the phone with my sister. I had to call her as soon as I heard. Peter Falk and the characters his played, Sam Diamond in Murder by Death is one that jumps out at me, and of course, the role that will forever define his career, Colombo were a constent presence in my childhood. My mother loved to watch detective stores and Colombo was one of our favorites.

For years, he starred on TV as Lieutenant Columbo, the shabby detective whose apparent absentmindedness hid a razor-sharp brain.


He had this "awe shuks" way about him that always lulled his targets into believing they could pull the wool over his eye. The Lieutenant would arrive at the murder sceen in his old car and beat up trench coat, holding his smoldering cigar and simply ask, "What I don't understand is..." We always knew the case had been solved when we heard the words, "Oh, and one more thing..."

Peter had been ill for a number of years. My thoughts are with his close friends and family. I hope he is resting peacefully. There will be pulling out my copy of Murder by Death and heading to my sister's to watch the first three seasons of Colombo.

After Words

There came this moment
when life broke free and
I questioned every tenet I sat down
every verb desired to be a noun.

I want - my want. I love - my love.

Afterwords, the compromise.
I sit beside you at the table
an ocean is between us.

I Love...

• I love days like today, that begin with a dark and ominous sky filled with the threat of rain that in a moment turns bright blue with crisp green leaves swaying lazily in the breeze.
• I love evenings like this evening when I can sit in my living room, windows open, and watch the blue sky turn orange, then violet gray as the sun sets behind the buildings.
• I love eating left overs with Alex and listening to her plan her birthday party. She is turning 12 this month and thing she wants more than anything else in the world is to ride in the front seat of a car.
• I love making cookies and watching Mythbusters with Alex because it means get to eat cookie dough and watch Mythbusters with Alex.

Rich and Mysterious Vanilla

At 28 it seems rather useless to continue to insist that I am not an adult. Yesterday I found myself on the floor of the file room, digging through boxes. I got up, dropped something and then bent down to pick it up again. Effortless. It gave me pause to wonder how much longer I will have this freedom of movement. How old can a person get before they have to stop sitting cross legged in their office chair? I'm realizing now that I've turned toward a modest, pragmatic view of life and those dull virtues that I ran from in my youth — don't run in the dark, don't be a jerk, get over yourself, do your work, avoid self-pity, pay attention, know that the law of gravity applies to you too, and hang onto your old friends because there may come a day when there's no good reason for people to like you except out of habit. These are sensible virtues of people that strike me in adulthood as vital to the preservation of life. One doesn't have to be so smart to make your way through adult life, but one should know the basic rules.

My church has recently hired a new organist who plays with a lot of flash and pulls out the trumpet stops and he makes me appreciate our old, now retired, organist who isn't that good and knows it. As a teenager I dated boys who were brilliant and unreliable and I amused myself with them and then I met a sweet guy who has those little virtues cited above and is be a good father and caring boyfriend, a steady reliable man who will dispose of deceased rats and will open doors and is capable of astonishing things.
The young and the restless are dismissive of the sensible virtues, on the basis of poor information, as vanilla, but you wouldn't dismiss vanilla if you'd ever tasted real vanilla, which is as rich and mysterious as chocolate. They only know the artificial vanilla that McDonald's sells, which is completely artificial. The blandness is in them, not in the vanilla, and their dismissiveness is pure horse hockey. Which is itself rich and mysterious, but not as good as vanilla.

Just Hanging Out

I was grabbing my Sunday morning $4 latte and caught a conversation between two girls about whether one of them had dated a particular boy or was just hanging out with him, an interesting piece of semantics. Texting the boy on a cell phone was what distinguished hang-out from date: She had flashed him a friendly "What's up?" and he being nearby met her for a dish of ice cream, and they migrated to a party at his friend's house and thence to his grandma's, where he is currently living (and driving Grandma's BMW), his parents having cut him loose financially since he quit school to become a writer. There was audible eye-rolling on the word "writer." She didn't want to date him because he was too screwed up, so it was only a hang-out situation. I wanted to know more about the BMW guy who lived with Grandma — think of it! Unconditional love plus a luxury automobile with a perpetual full tank of gas — but the girls drifted away and left me sitting alone, wondering if love has lost some of its mystery.

It seems to me that Dexter Green of F. Scott Fitgerald's "Winter Dreams" would've lost interest in the wealthy Judy Jones if there had been cell phones in 1922 and he could've texted her and hung out with her instead of worshipping her from a distance and making her a symbol of all that is Noble and Beautiful. Hanging out would've shown Dexter what a nobody she was and saved him the trouble of disillusionment.

Or Holden Caulfield. A cell phone would've made "The Catcher in the Rye" a denser and funnier book, Holden roaming around, flashing messages to Sally Woodruff and Jane Gallagher and Phoebe and Sunny, instead of brooding about who is and who is not a phony.

Meanwhile these young girls are looking to become the next great doctors or lawyers which means long meetings and 12-hour workdays and plenty of homework, all in hopes of early retirement at 55 with enough cash to go traveling on and transform yourself from stolid drudge into a beautiful adventurer. But 55 is a little late for transformation. And having money gets in the way of it. Sorry. All you can do is hang out on the periphery of transformation, as I do and personally I am rooting for the BMW boy who is screwed up (always an asset for a writer) and wants to maybe write a novel about a dropout like himself, which could be a huge best-seller and earn him enough to be able to afford a reclusive life in New Hampshire, and those two girls will be telling people for the next 50 years how they used to date him. You just wait and see.

Winter's End Brings Prince Charming

The big soul-stirring blizzard of 2011 hit us hard here in the bayou city. Not a drop of snow fell to the ground, but in true southern fasion when the windchill reached -8 degress the city rose up like a chorus of Russian peasants coming onstage in Act II after the Princess has fainted for having been spurned by the young lieutenant at Count Androvsky's grand ball, and we sang, "With true hearts and strong, we go to the fields to harvest the cotten. The bitter winds we endure only make us more grateful for the biscuts with its dollop of white cream gravey which is all one needs to be happy."

We except the hardships of life and trust in the small pleasures to see us through. Possessing the ideal makes a person nervous: you sense the inevitable decline just ahead. Just this week we have had a string of perfect days — fresh and sweet in the morning, afternoons balmy, and evenings you could sit outdoors and so of course I'm looking over my sholder.

I was excepted into seminary last week. As one wonderfully encouraging mentor put it, this is but the first step on a long and arduous journey. I am still waiting to hear about scholarships and I am still waiting on a lot of other things that are involved in the path towards ministry, but it is a step in the process. I have a foot on solid ground so I push aside my wary and unforgiving nature, that excellent sense of doom, to savor a moment of joy.

Moments of joy have become a new mode of life. I have met a person of the male persuasion. Besides being kind, smart and handsome he seems to like me quite a lot for reasons that I still don’t comprehend, but like I said he’s kind, smart and handsome so I’ve decided not to argue with his affections. I’m sure there came a day when Prince Charming looked at Cinderella and found her mouse fetish odd and her tendency to lose expensive objects vexing, but not before they danced until midnight and talk extravagantly about life so for now I am just enjoying the ball.