Last week I was sitting in my local Starbucks, studying. This song came on the radio. My heart swooned. It's just that kind of song.
That night there were two young women who were working the coffee bar. This song came on the radio. This conversation followed:
I don't like this song.
Me either.
What's it even suppose to be about?
Yeah, no kidding.
That night there was a middle aged gentleman who was buying a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper on his iPad. This song came on the radio. This conversation followed. He looked up and made this simple reply:
This song is about love.
The redemptive power of love.
Last week I was setting in my local Starbucks, studying. This song came on the radio. My hear swooned. This conversation followed. A simple reply was made. It's just that kind of song.
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.
So the daily calendar I bought myself for Christmas this year is called Forgotten English. Every day it presents a word or phrase that was once used in English speaking society, but has since died either because other words have replaced them or because the thing it describes no longer exists.
Today's word: Green-sickness is defined by James Stormonth's Dictionary of the English, Language published in 1884, as "A disease in which the person has a sickly paleness, with a green tinge of the complexion, chiefly confined to unmarried females.
According to Zell’s Popular Encyclopedia, published in 1871 “….the cure of this disease are gentle exercise in open air, with nutritious and rather stimulating diet, sea-bathing, and agreeable society."
As much as I identify as a feminist, there are time I wouldn't mind being able to fain "green-sickness".
Of course then I’m reminded that today is the Feast Eve of St. Agnes, a day when unmarried females would fast and pray to the patroness of chastity all day long and then drink a concoction of dried worms and white wine before going to bed in order to induce dreams of the man they would one day marry.
I can’t help but wonder if green-sickness wasn't perhaps induced by that kind of diet and “cure.” I have to say this kind of thing makes me very glad to be an educated woman living in an educated, 21 century society.
All of this, of course has nothing to do with anything. Just thought I would share.
Last night, in honor of Halloween Alex wanted to watch a scary movie. I don't own any horror slasher flicks, not that I think there is inherently wrong with them I just don't enjoy having the crap scared out of me and I don't find violence to be entertaining.
So we looked to see what was offered by way of streaming on Netflix. The answer to THAT was not much, but they did have Night of the Living Dead. A classic. We got to the part where the zombies chase the girl into the house and we had to turn it off. Alex was too scared. So we watched Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein instead. Spooky, but funny - my idea of a good time. And it got me thinking. What are my all time favorite Halloween movies. I came up with my top five - the order is subject to change.
5. Spaced Invaders - I haven't found this movie anywhere recently. It was made in the early 1990s about four aliens who crash land in a small town in Iowa on Halloween night. Hilarity ensues.
4. Arsenic and Old Lace - I'm not sure how many times that play has been made into a movie, but I love the version with Cary Grant. Fun, scary and the fact that Boris Karloff plays Jonathen - the mass murdering brother who "looks like Boris Karloff" makes it even better.
3. Meet Me in St. Louis - I know, it's not a classic Halloween film, but Halloween in is in it. I can still hear Margret O'Brian crying, chocking back tears... "HE TRIED TO KILL ME!"
2. It's the Great Pumkin Charlie Brown - needs no explanation.
1. The Mummy - with Boris Karloff. To me, this is the classic 1950s horror film. Karloff is scary beyond all reason and gives you all the suspense and none of the gore.
Today, 70 percent of American households will open their doors and offer candy to strangers, most of them children; 50 percent of Americans will take photographs of family or friends in costume; and the nation as a whole will spend more than seven billion dollars.* In terms of dollars spent, it is the second most popular holiday of the year in this country, after Christmas.
For the Celtic people of Northeastern Europe, November 1st was New Year's Day, and October 31 was the last night of the year. Celts believed it was the night that spirits, ghosts, fairies and goblins freely walked the earth. Archaeologists aren't entirely sure what all the traditions were, but they believe the holiday involved bonfires, dressing up in costumes to scare away evil spirits, and offering food and drink to the spirits of family members who had come back to visit the home.
It was Pope Gregory III in the eighth century A.D. who tried to turn Halloween into a Christian holiday to divert Northern Europeans from celebrating an old pagan ritual. He made November 1st All Saints Day, and October 31 became All Hallows Eve. Instead of providing food and drink to the spirits, Christians were encouraged to provide food and drink to the poor. And instead of dressing up like animals and ghosts, Christians were encouraged to dress up like their favorite saints.
In the United States, Puritans tried to outlaw Halloween, in part because of its association with Catholicism. So it was the Irish Catholics who brought Halloween to this country, when they immigrated here in great numbers after the potato famine in the 1840's. Since the Irish were largely poor and oppressed, Halloween became a holiday for them to let off steam by pulling pranks, hoisting wagons onto barn roofs, releasing cows from their pastures, and committing all kinds of mischief involving outhouses. Treats evolved as a way to bribe the vandals and protect homes.
But by the late 1800's, Victorian women's magazines began to offer suggestions for celebrating Halloween in wholesome ways, with barn dancing and apple bobbing. And by the early 20th Century, it became a holiday for children more than adults. In 1920, the Ladies' Home Journal made the first known reference to children going door to door for candy, and by the 1950's it was a universal practice in this country. By 1999, 92 percent of America's children were trick-or-treating.
What's interesting about Halloween is that it has no real connection to the majority religion of this country, it does not celebrate an event in our nation's past, it does not involve traveling to visit family, and it doesn't even give us a day off work. But it gives us the chance to try out other identities. For one day, people can feel free to dress as the opposite gender, as criminals, as superheroes, celebrities, animals, or even inanimate objects. But Halloween retailers report that the most popular costumes remain some variation on witches, ghosts, and devils.
*according to an article I say on yahoo this morning.. and the 92 percent thing is something I read a while ago, it may not actually be 92 percent, but it was 90 something.
I know it’s been a while and this is going to sound like an odd thing to post about, but it’s been bugging me. So I’m posting.
With Mitt Romney, a Mormon, running for president there have been questions raised about the Mormon Church’s relationship to Christianity.
I want to preface what I’m about to say with this: I’m not attacking Mormons. They’re nice, good people. I’m not questioning a Mormon’s ability to be a good president. Being Christian should not be a prerequisite for holding public office, especially in America where freedom of religion is the law of the land.
I also recognize that there are lot of people who are Christian who don’t agree. I realize that there are some things that I believe that other Christians don’t. That doesn’t make me not Christian. There are some things that other Christians believe that I don’t. That doesn’t make them not Christian.
That said, Mormon’s aren’t Christian. There are key doctrines of faith that unite Christians with each other and at the same time distinguish Christianity from other faiths. These are the doctrines that make Christians not Jewish. Or Muslim. Or Buddhist. Or Mormon.
I realize that there is a lot of nuance in any faith, and I’m not at all claiming to know or understand the totality of what the Mormon Church professes. These are just key doctrines in which Christians and Mormon’s differ.
Christians teach:
Belief in one eternal triune God,
the Almighty, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
God has no beginning and no end.
Mormons teach:
God the Father is only one of countless gods,
He used to be a man on another planet.
He became a god by following the laws and ordinances of that god in that world.
Christians teach:
Jesus is the Christ, and is “one Being with the Father”
through him all things were made.
He came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary
and became truly human. Mormons teach:
God brought one of his wives with him to this world
with whom he produces spirit children who then inhabit human bodies at birth.
The first spirit child to be born to god and his wife was Jesus.
Second was Satan.
We are all also spirit children.
Christians teach:
Jesus was crucified, died and was resurrected for the sake of our salvation. Salvation is understood to mean the forgiveness of our sins through the grace of God.
Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. Christian hope is looking forward to the day of resurrection when God’s kingdom will be united with earth and have no end.
Mormons teach:
One must follow the laws and ordinances of the Mormon church in order to earn forgiveness.
Salvation is both forgiveness of sins and the promise of universal resurrection.
Mormons can say they are Christian all they want, but that doesn’t make it so. When one group starts with a belief in one eternal God that created the universe and the other group starts with the belief in a man who became one of many gods back when he lived on a different planet, they aren’t sharing a common frame of reference.
I swear I'm going to stop posting Youtube videos as soon as the novelty of being able to watch videos on my computer wears off.
Today I bring you a song from my childhood. So I took care to find kids singing this song. I learned this song while I attended a Church of Christ elementary school. So I took care to find kids singing without instruments. We sang this song all the time, in class, in the halls in chapel, on our way to chapel, at recess, and even after recess. So I took care to find a group of kids who looked like they were passing time, and just having some fun doing it.
I don't know why I had this song stuck in my head all day... I just did. I hope it sticks in your head too.
I'm including this version just for the heck of it and so you can see the lyrics of the full version. I think the group has great harmony, but they sing the song way too fast and without the right amount of fevered excitement.
Before you watch this though, I think you need to be prepared for the image of Jesus knocking on the door... it could cause nightmares.
I have a new computer. One that works. It's light. Easy to use. Cute. Cheap. All the things I told the sales person at the electronics store I was looking for. If you saw the Smurf movie (I hope you didn't) I have the same computer Neil Patric Harris used. I have a Smurf computer! Its so awesome to click on a program and have it just open.I can watch videos on Youtube again.
Speaking of, here is a really amazing music video of one of my new favorite songs. Bon Iver - "Holocene"
…and at once I knew I was not magnificent strayed above the highway aisle jagged vacance, thick with ice I could see for miles, miles, miles
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.
The day Alex was scheduled to return home she missed her flight. I love how the people who heard this wanted to know how that happened. It seems like the premise of epic tale of struggle and woe. And I guess it could have been if you think about the guy who recently died from playing is Xbox because that was what she was doing with her father two hours before her plane was scheduled to be in the air. In their defense, her father likes to point out that the airline moved the departure time up by 15 minutes.
Whatever the true cause, she missed the last flight out of Small Town California so I was just going to have to wait to see my baby. I had to WAIT. This waiting went on for DAYS. Ok - Hours. Many, many hours. As many hours as there are between 12 PM Saturday and 3 PM Sunday, which doesn't seem like many right now, but at the time, as the minutes were amplified by my baby's absence and the thought that she would miss the next flight as well, it seemed like all of the hours that ever were, a collection of time so vast that I could have witnessed the Colorado River carve out the Grand Canyon, one layer of dirt at a time.
When she finally arrived home her eyes were glued to her new iTouch. Curse you Steve Jobs and all your fancy products and seductive marketing. I guess on the bright side of things she wasn't all that bothered when I left her a few days later to attend a gathering of Exploring Candidates. It was interesting and refreshing to meet other people who are heeding the call to ordained ministry. And the fact that the Candidates got to take the written portion of the psychological test assessment together made the three hour ordeal just a little bit easier because not so secretly everyone knows we're bat-shit-crazy. Why else would we be there?
As fun as that was - the best part of the weekend had to Sunday after noon when we went to see Smurfs. I'm not saying that you should rush to your nearest theater so see this one. Its cheesy ball and predictable and just plan dumb in parts, but as a person who was raised by Smurfs and Doogie Howser, M.D. it was an opportunity to relive the best parts of childhood for 90 minutes. The day they remake He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra Princese of Power my life will have come full circle.
I have been gone. I wish I could say it was because I was really close to achieving world peace or at least ending this never ending drought that has plagued the South and Midwest - maybe now that this weather has made its way to New York City the powers that be will take notice and DO SOMETHING.
Does anyone else remember that movie that NBC shortly after Katrina? It was about a huge hurricane that threatened to destroy a major city, but before it could, the Local News Reporter and some Really Hott Guy (I don't remember what his job was) shut down the city's power grid thus, LOWERING THE TEMPERATURE OF THE EARTH and magically turning the hurricane into a light breeze. (Why waste money on scientific consultants right?)
Where are Local News Reporter and Really Hott Guy when you need them? Things are so hot and humid in these-here-parts that by the time I get to my apartment and CLIMB UP STAIRS I just want to wrap myself in a little air conditioned cocoon and wait for fall.
Since Alex is away for a month I'm attempting to embrace the "single in the city" life. I hit the 75% of skirts sale at Old Navy this weekend, doing my part to keep sweatshop workers around the world employed. Then yesterday - a Monday no less - I went out at 8:00 pm.
That's right. I left my humble abode at 8:00pm for a quick work out at my local gym before topping off the night with a jaunt to my favorite watering hole - the grocery store. It was here that I made a wonderful impulse buy - nail polish. The following conversation between myself and the young checker insuded:
Boy: $7.50 for nail polish?
Me: I know I'm horrible, but the color is awesome.
Boy: Nail color is worth $7.50?
Me: Not normally, no. But this is chinchlly*.
The boy nodded as if he now understood. As if my explanation had indeed explained something. Chinchilly indeed my friends. Chinchilly indeed.
* I would post a picture of the Essie nail polish in question, but the pictures I have found on-line don't do it justice. In pictures the polish looks gray, but in person it looks purple gray.
** Also, while I'm on the subject of "single in the city" - is it just me or is there some global conspiracy by the cable networks to keep Sex in the City on TV twenty-four hours a day? What does it say about me that I identify most with Carrie? Shoes and Prada aside.
My best friend's In-Laws are in town. They are staying with her while they remodel her kitchen. Or to put it another way, her In-laws have been living with her for a month and they have destroyed her kitchen. I buy chocolate chip cookies and wine and set off to console the desperate.
After 10 minutes of driving I am in the heart of my friend's neighborhood at the corner of Drug Dealer's Paradise and Working Girl Central. My tire blows. Not only do I hear it and feel it blow, but a nice lady who just happens to work the corner knocks on my window, "You have a flat!" I sigh and pull into the nearest parking lot which happens to have not only Korean grocery store and Mexican eatery, but a message parlor with tented windows as well. Great.
I think: "Right, well it can't be that hard to change a tire." I open the trunk and find a screwdriver, jumper cables, shoes, lawn chair, large amount of plastic swords, two teddy bears, Cheeze Nips, water gun and underneath it all, a tire bolted down, which I cannot budge. I go back to the front of the car to try to will the tire to change itself. A pickup truck pulls into the lot and I wave frantically. The nice man stops and asks me if I need any help. As it so happens, yes I'm desperate, and the man sets about freeing the tire and jack from the trunk. It is at this point I realize that his knuckles spell out "K-I-L-L". I take a deep breath and look at his girlfriend who is still sitting in the truck. As a ponder the wisdom of this situation the man continues on with the job in hand. It takes him about five minutes. My tire has a lengthy gash in it. He pours scorn over my spare and implies I will die horribly if I attempt to drive on it as is. He says he will go straight to a gas station to put air in my spare.
As he throws the donut into the bed of his truck the girl friend in the front cab is having a hissy fit. I suspect she does not like me and these suspicions are confirmed when he forces her to stay with me while he redeems the tire. I extend my hand to the designated-bodyguard-girlfriend as she gets out of the truck. As I am introducing myself my eyes are involuntarily drawn to her breast which are slightly covered by a neon green tank top which reads, "Light Up the Nite!" in pink glitter. It turns out Chloe is a women of few words. Neither of us is good at small talk so we sit in silence and wait for her boyfriend to return. By now, the poor guy is dripping in sweat. It has been another 100 degree day and he has been fiddling with my tire for close to 30 minutes. He wastes no time finishing the job and refuses my offer of all the cash in my wallet. I shake his hand and thank Chloe for lending him to me. I do not think she likes me. They drive away. I open the chocolate chip cookies.
I got really excited the other day when I was watching FOX NEWS of all networks and they cited a poll that shows 59% of Americans think we should leave Afghanistan now that Osama Bin Laden is dead. This is progress. I thought, the American people are coming around. The American people are starting to motivated less by fear and more by rational thinking.
I thought that until I was reading an Article on NPR.org today which cited a poll that shows 41% of Americans believe dooms day will arrive by the year 2050. That's almost half. Almost half of the American population think that dooms day is just 39 years away. That's in my life time. Almost half of the people living in the United States of America - and industrialized, secularized nation - think that I'll only be 67 years old when Jesus starts raising people from the dead. According to 41% of the Americans who answered the poll cited by NPR I will see zombies walk this earth before I die.
That blows my mind. Is that the divide in this country? Fifty-nine percent of us are rational, thinking people and the other forty-one percent are just bat shit crazy.
I turned on the radio this morning and learned that today is Star Wars Day. According to the online resource Wookieepedia, it is typically celebrated by sci-fi fans the world over with parties, movie marathons, Star Wars-themed toys, the occasional light-saber duel, and movie-quote exchanges on Twitter. You could also celebrate by reading one of the many Star Wars-related novels, playing a video game, or gazing at your collection of action figures in their original packaging. “It’s nice that this particular date seems to observe and celebrate the power of the Force, and we’re thrilled that Star Wars fans continue to find new ways to connect with a galaxy far, far away,” said a Lucas Films spokesperson.
Despite the fervor of some of its fans, Star Wars Day is not a religious holiday yet, although the Church of Jediism is lobbying hard. The City of Los Angeles prefers to celebrate Star Wars Day on May 25, the anniversary of the film’s release, but as for the rest of us ...
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.
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.
On this cool night in Houston I see a little breeze in the trees as I look out my window, dozens of lighted windows of private lives, one of which is mine. I am reminded of this by the fact that 100 yards away a small number of Arab men have gathered. Their voices are just loud enough for me to hear. I don't speak Farsi, so I imagine them discussing recent events of the day.
I leave the blogging world for a few weeks and Egypt over throws her dictator and the Middle East is in an uproar. If I had only realized the impact I have the world I would have stopped blogging a lot sooner. I’ve always been a fan of revolutions, especially when they evolve from the masses and so count me as one who is eager to see what path these freedom fighters decided to take. Now that the good old USA is too weak to exert his influence in every corner of the globe, perhaps these countries will be free to find their own voice, apart from the influence of Western threats and bribes. For once our talking heads are forced to sit on the sidelines while the true players decided their fates. So I will refrain from offering my further opinions.
This is what we do in a big city: we make up stories about each other. I take my brown haired daughter to a crowded restaurant and she gazes into faces as we wait to be seated and because its a local eatery and not the Olive Garden there is an astonishing variety of faces, all shades, all shapes, all hairstyles from punk to post-hair. The entire city of Houston isn't like this. You get far enough away from the center and suddenly everyone looks rather similar — it's like the old joke about the little ant who was confused because all his uncles were ants — but in the center there's plenty to catch your eye. I have to remind her of the five-second rule. You can stare at anybody for five seconds but then you have to look away. Look but don't make a scene.
I have a hard time comprehending why anyone would want to be out of reach of such a rich tapestry of sights, sounds and cultures. I haven't quite wrapped my mind around preferring a McMansion that has been locked away from the world to a comfortable two bedroom surround my lights, noise and the richness of diverse and interesting neighbors.
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.
This fall I quiet haphazardly bought a pair of new red shoes at half off. I bought them not sure when of if I would ever wear them, but they were cute. Cute and half off. The longer I owned these particular shoes, I began to realize something magical. That red shoes go with everything. I know that it is said that things can't make you happy and perhaps that saying is often true, but I draw the line at my red shoes. I am happier when I wear them. They bring an extra spark to any day, and I'm happy when I think about the fact that God made me the type of person who dares to own a pair of red slippers, Hans Christian Anderson's ghastly tale not with standing.
So it was that last night I slipped on my shoes to join the New Years count down with friends old and new. We ate too much food and had just the right amount of wine. We laughed and joked and pushed each other on to stay at the party until midnight. There is nothing quite like celebrating New Years in the middle of Bum-Fucked-Egypt. In the city they have things like laws that keep hooligans from shooting bottle rocks at each other in a misguided attempt at celebration. In BFE every one's a hooligan and there are no laws against setting off fireworks in your back yard, right next to that huge oak tree. The mayhem starts at midnight and we old battle axes drag ourselves out to the front porch in equal amazement and fright because even unsafe fireworks are magical and I'd rather be outside when the roof goes up in flames.
A lot happened in 2010. The Olympics and Jo at A Majority of Two introduced me to Vancouver, CA. And I feel head over heals for that beautiful city and the not a mascot Muk Muk. I also learned about vuvuzelas, cheered for Spain's World Cup win, and said fair well to Paul the Octopus.
This year I didn't listen to a lot of new music, or the new music I listened to all sounded the same, but I did see a lot of movies. I saw the Lisbeth Salander trilogy and loved it. The final Harry Potter, Part I was spot on. The Twilight movie I was sucked into seeing sucked more than I thought it would. Disney Animation's Tangled was good, but Disney/Pixar's Toy Story 3 was better. If we are talking best film I saw this year I would have to hand it to The King's Speech. Not because I just saw it or it stars the ever sexy Colin Firth, but because it was the first movie I left, having paid nearly $10 for and wanted to turn right around and pay another $10 to see it again.
In 2010 I discovered E.L. Koningsburg's wonderful stories and Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Finished reading Stieg Larrson's Lisbeth Salander Trilogy and finally read Harper Lee's magnum opus, To Kill a Mockingbird. My favorite non-fiction works include Neal Gabler's telling of Walt Disney's life story, Karen Armstrong's A Case for God and Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
I was laid off in October which was great because I had the chance to do some random things I normally would have passed on like visiting the Menial Collection and eating lunch in all kinds of trendy restaurants with my not so trendy friends. I found joy and courage in relaxation, art, journaling, prayer and loved every minute of being a stay at home mom. Still, if one is to buy red shoes, one must have an income so I was grateful to Elaine for retiring and to the people at the French oil company for hiring me on as her replacement. I finally responded to God's nudging and turned in my application for seminary and sat through necessary interviews with key Church people about pursuing a path towards ordination. That all sounds like I've worked out what I'm doing, but this is still just the preface. God is still preparing me for this journey. Ask me next January if we've reached the exposition.
So here we are. We lost a lot of good people in 2010, but you and I didn't die. Reason enough to celebrate. You and I go on. We dance our little dance and pursue the circuit of our dreams insofar as the hours of daylight permit. Love, courage, justice, faith, hope, charity. God bless you all.
