I got some tough news today, and they're not kidding when they say the first stage is denial. As soon as it becomes real, I'll be pretty upset--like in the cartoons when the kid is crying, but all your see are droplets of water six inches off her face. But right now, I'm still in slack-jaw stunned mode.
No worries, it's not anything drastic (health issues, etc.), just some news that's surprising and sad, but also good in other lights. (Sorry, it's under wraps, so must remain hush-hush. But since I just found out, and I've got 56 minutes left to slice for the day, this is the topic du jour... or du the last couple hours, anyway.)
It's also got me thinking about how tenuous our connections are. I've been in Maine for 5 1/2 years, and still my connections here are hardly permanent. I have a great job and a great church and wonderful friends, but how many variables would need to change to make that untrue? If I lost my job, if God pulled me from my church, if friends moved? And then where am I? No man is an island, but sometimes this girl feels like she's a piece of archipelago, unsure if she's drifting toward or away.
Apologies for the melancholia tonight--will give further news when I can.
--------------------
To spin things around, slice elsewhere, and otherwise end on a happy note, a bit of amusing text conversation between myself and my good friend Esther tonight, regarding our mutual and complete love of the 1992 adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans (I rewatched it yesterday, she did today.)
E: "What are you looking at?" "I'm looking at you, miss." Nobody speaks like that anymore... Sigh.
C: UGHHHH. When I watched that yesterday, I just yelled, 'GOOD LINE. That's a good line.' Somebody tell my [future] husband. Use that one. Winner.
E: I'll pass it along to him. Maybe he'll even wear the loincloth.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
A Recap (Slice 9)
I've kept waiting to see if something would occur to me to slice about today, and nothing has. So, in brief recap:
- I had a nice dream last night--nothing specific, but just being with a man who loved me, and a little girl (not ours, just one we knew), who was having fun squeezing between us on a seat. No further plot than that--but a nice little way to spend a night. :)
- I had set my alarm for 7 (working from home today, so I could have slept in), but woke up at 6:10, well-rested (due to good dreams?) to discover that I had not, in fact, set that alarm. Thank you, Jesus.
- worked from home today, and walked to the grocery store at lunch, enjoying the ridiculously springlike weather we're having. Love it.
- Had my former roommate and her dog (Puggoh) over for dinner, and we watched The Dark Crystal. Wow, did we embrace some strange ideas in the '80s. Glad we're all better now.
That's about it! Serving tomorrow: helping some friends work on their newly-bought house, and then joining some friends to give our church's kitchen a much-needed deep clean. Lots of work, but I'm looking forward to it--since Jamaica, my hands seem to crave "real" work more...
- I had a nice dream last night--nothing specific, but just being with a man who loved me, and a little girl (not ours, just one we knew), who was having fun squeezing between us on a seat. No further plot than that--but a nice little way to spend a night. :)
- I had set my alarm for 7 (working from home today, so I could have slept in), but woke up at 6:10, well-rested (due to good dreams?) to discover that I had not, in fact, set that alarm. Thank you, Jesus.
- worked from home today, and walked to the grocery store at lunch, enjoying the ridiculously springlike weather we're having. Love it.
- Had my former roommate and her dog (Puggoh) over for dinner, and we watched The Dark Crystal. Wow, did we embrace some strange ideas in the '80s. Glad we're all better now.
That's about it! Serving tomorrow: helping some friends work on their newly-bought house, and then joining some friends to give our church's kitchen a much-needed deep clean. Lots of work, but I'm looking forward to it--since Jamaica, my hands seem to crave "real" work more...
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Moderation (Slice 8)
I'm getting a little worried that moderation is becoming archaic.
There have been a couple things today that have put me in mind of this. One, a conversation about politics--not a political conversation, but a discussion of what politics has become--with a coworker; the other, my and others' reactions to the Kony 2012 YouTube video.
What concerns me is that we seem to be forgetting that it's okay to be middle of the road about things. Sometimes you don't have to pick a side. There are times when you can weigh evidence and be, yourself, a hung jury; or when you, frankly, just don't care enough to investigate and choose. By questioning something, you suddenly paint yourself as being against it, as taking a firm stand. By not arguing against something else, you must be condoning it. That's exhausting, and there's something to be said for an occasional stance somewhere in the middle.
And as we lose moderation, we also (related? not?) are losing our ability to have a civil, let alone friendly, discourse with someone who disagrees with us. An in-depth discussion is messy, and can lead to you reconsidering your own views. It's much cleaner to dismiss, label, name-call, besmirch. Maybe I'm just naive, but I thought we used to be able to do this: a Republican and a Democrat, a Muslim and a Christian, a pro and a con could sit down and talk something over, examine one another's views, and leave the better for it. Did I imagine this? Because it seems increasingly rare. Everyone seems settled in camps, and no one goes out after dark. The few who stumble about in the open are dismissed as wahoos. And the sad thing is that as two sides grow increasingly entrenched, they alienate those who were undecided, and those undecideds become increasingly jaded and apathetic--it's not their hill to die on, and fighting seems to be the only option.
I'm sorry if I'm being equal parts vague and jaded here, myself. But I've spent a good chunk of the day talking specifics, and I don't feel like getting into them anymore. It just saddens me that we're losing the very democratic (or republican, if you prefer) keystone of discourse, political or otherwise.
My challenge, both to myself and to you: Go have a chat with someone who has a radically different opinion about something that you. Tell them ahead of time what you're doing, so they know they're not being set up. And ask them to talk to you about why they feel that way--not as a defense, not in preparation for your turn, but just to listen to them. Really listen to what they say: what they think, and why; how they came to this way of thinking. And then thank them for sharing, and change the subject to something innocuous, and go on being friends.
There have been a couple things today that have put me in mind of this. One, a conversation about politics--not a political conversation, but a discussion of what politics has become--with a coworker; the other, my and others' reactions to the Kony 2012 YouTube video.
What concerns me is that we seem to be forgetting that it's okay to be middle of the road about things. Sometimes you don't have to pick a side. There are times when you can weigh evidence and be, yourself, a hung jury; or when you, frankly, just don't care enough to investigate and choose. By questioning something, you suddenly paint yourself as being against it, as taking a firm stand. By not arguing against something else, you must be condoning it. That's exhausting, and there's something to be said for an occasional stance somewhere in the middle.
And as we lose moderation, we also (related? not?) are losing our ability to have a civil, let alone friendly, discourse with someone who disagrees with us. An in-depth discussion is messy, and can lead to you reconsidering your own views. It's much cleaner to dismiss, label, name-call, besmirch. Maybe I'm just naive, but I thought we used to be able to do this: a Republican and a Democrat, a Muslim and a Christian, a pro and a con could sit down and talk something over, examine one another's views, and leave the better for it. Did I imagine this? Because it seems increasingly rare. Everyone seems settled in camps, and no one goes out after dark. The few who stumble about in the open are dismissed as wahoos. And the sad thing is that as two sides grow increasingly entrenched, they alienate those who were undecided, and those undecideds become increasingly jaded and apathetic--it's not their hill to die on, and fighting seems to be the only option.
I'm sorry if I'm being equal parts vague and jaded here, myself. But I've spent a good chunk of the day talking specifics, and I don't feel like getting into them anymore. It just saddens me that we're losing the very democratic (or republican, if you prefer) keystone of discourse, political or otherwise.
My challenge, both to myself and to you: Go have a chat with someone who has a radically different opinion about something that you. Tell them ahead of time what you're doing, so they know they're not being set up. And ask them to talk to you about why they feel that way--not as a defense, not in preparation for your turn, but just to listen to them. Really listen to what they say: what they think, and why; how they came to this way of thinking. And then thank them for sharing, and change the subject to something innocuous, and go on being friends.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
How I'd Like My Mornings (Slice 7)
It's funny how a brain works.
When I started contemplating moving out from my roommate of three years, I had this idea figured out: that once I lived on my own, I could start my mornings out right: make coffee, play some music, write in my journal/blog, maybe read my Bible a bit. I was convinced that once I had my own place, I would have this glowing, angelic start to my day.
Weird, you say? Wouldn't your roommate be upstairs asleep, you say? What was keeping you from doing this already, you say?
Diddly squat.
And, not surprisingly, I have not been starting my days this way, even though I moved into my own place last October. (Given, there were many other factors to the move, and my ole roomie and I are happily settled in new places, but I'm just eyeballing this particular justification.) Every once in a while I end up being ready a few minutes early, and try to arrange my little coffee & Jesus time, but it works out to about 7 minutes, which isn't quite what I was going for. ("Every little bit counts, blah dee blah dee blah.")
But this morning kind of worked, by a simple juggling of order. Ordinarily, I *say* I'm getting up early to have enough time for some morning downtime, and then some combination of the following happens: I hit the snooze button too many times (no more--hurrah for my SleepCycle app!), I lose 10 minutes to day-dreaming/day-planning while standing in the shower, I happen to need to have to check Facebook, it's one of those days that demands some lip-syncing into the hairbrush... You get the idea.
And suddenly it's, "Rebecca's going to be here in 4 minutes and I don't know where my pants are!"
Here's the puzzle: if I do oversleep, I can ACTUALLY get ready (showered, hair dryed, teeth brushed, dressed, lunch grabbed, out the door) in 20 minutes. So where does my daily hour go??
So this morning, we tried something different. I got up, and did not check Facebook when I went to turn SleepCycle off. I put on my super comfy zebra robe, and went out to the kitchen and set coffee to brewing. I pulled my Bible, my journal, and my Bible study book out and sat down to the table with coffee in hand. (I'd left the phone in the room, so I was music-less, but returning to it might have resulted in a lapse of Facebook ignorance.) And half an hour later, I put away my stuff, slurped down my coffee, and hopped in the shower.
I was two minutes late, hopping out of the house pulling a shoe on, but STILL. Overall success.
Tomorrow morning is another day--but here's hoping...
-----------------
Postscript:
I was wondering, so I pulled up my statistics on SleepCycle: it helped that, despite the brevity, I got some rockin' deep sleep last night. :) (Going to bed with a love song in your head is a good sleep aid, perhaps?)
When I started contemplating moving out from my roommate of three years, I had this idea figured out: that once I lived on my own, I could start my mornings out right: make coffee, play some music, write in my journal/blog, maybe read my Bible a bit. I was convinced that once I had my own place, I would have this glowing, angelic start to my day.
Weird, you say? Wouldn't your roommate be upstairs asleep, you say? What was keeping you from doing this already, you say?
Diddly squat.
And, not surprisingly, I have not been starting my days this way, even though I moved into my own place last October. (Given, there were many other factors to the move, and my ole roomie and I are happily settled in new places, but I'm just eyeballing this particular justification.) Every once in a while I end up being ready a few minutes early, and try to arrange my little coffee & Jesus time, but it works out to about 7 minutes, which isn't quite what I was going for. ("Every little bit counts, blah dee blah dee blah.")
But this morning kind of worked, by a simple juggling of order. Ordinarily, I *say* I'm getting up early to have enough time for some morning downtime, and then some combination of the following happens: I hit the snooze button too many times (no more--hurrah for my SleepCycle app!), I lose 10 minutes to day-dreaming/day-planning while standing in the shower, I happen to need to have to check Facebook, it's one of those days that demands some lip-syncing into the hairbrush... You get the idea.
And suddenly it's, "Rebecca's going to be here in 4 minutes and I don't know where my pants are!"
Here's the puzzle: if I do oversleep, I can ACTUALLY get ready (showered, hair dryed, teeth brushed, dressed, lunch grabbed, out the door) in 20 minutes. So where does my daily hour go??
So this morning, we tried something different. I got up, and did not check Facebook when I went to turn SleepCycle off. I put on my super comfy zebra robe, and went out to the kitchen and set coffee to brewing. I pulled my Bible, my journal, and my Bible study book out and sat down to the table with coffee in hand. (I'd left the phone in the room, so I was music-less, but returning to it might have resulted in a lapse of Facebook ignorance.) And half an hour later, I put away my stuff, slurped down my coffee, and hopped in the shower.
I was two minutes late, hopping out of the house pulling a shoe on, but STILL. Overall success.
Tomorrow morning is another day--but here's hoping...
-----------------
Postscript:
I was wondering, so I pulled up my statistics on SleepCycle: it helped that, despite the brevity, I got some rockin' deep sleep last night. :) (Going to bed with a love song in your head is a good sleep aid, perhaps?)
(Seriously, aside from Jesus, this might as well be an ad for SleepCycle. If you have an iPhone
and you sleep alone, it's about the best thing that's going to happen to you, ever. :) )
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Love Song (Slice 6)
Preface: I realize that some readers won't follow this post, in the sense that I'll sound like a raving lunatic. Sorry, and I wish I could offer some words of comfort, but the facts are these: despite the fact that I still live a pretty unconvincing life, God has made me something I couldn't have been on my own. He's healed and restored me from the pain and disappointment and brokenness of my past through the life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus. If I know you personally and you don't know this about me, all I can do is apologize for my hypocrisy, and ask you not to judge Him based on me.
-------------
I'm a romantic, and I love me a good love song. And most of the time, I'm in enough of a romantic-y, day-dreamy mood that I can picture getting sung to by my future husband. But tonight, I guess it just isn't one of those nights. And while a love song is stuck in my head, for the moment I can only hear it as it would be sung by Jesus.
"Oh, my dear, I'll wait for you.
grace tonight will pull us through:
until the tears have left your eyes,
until the fears can sleep at night,
until the demons that you're scared of
disappear inside;
until the guilt begins to crack
and the weight falls from your back,
oh, my dear, I'll keep you in My arms tonight."
The songwriter explains how it came to him, after a conversation with a then-girlfriend, and how it made him think of James 5:16, about the need to confess ourselves to each other, and I think this is true, and a totally valid basis for a song. But I think, like most love songs, this one works on another level, too. I think we can get so stuck in our own heads, so convinced that we need to keep up a facade, and God's sitting here, waiting, gently asking how long are we going to keep trying to fake it till we make it.
It's been one of those days where I've been frustrated, so I've resorted to complaining and whining for a good deal of the day. And I hate that, because at the time it feels like I've vented and I feel better, but at the end of the day all I feel like is a whiny little pansy jerk. And sometimes I need to hear that God doesn't hold that against me, that He remembers I'm only dust, that screwing up is allowed, and that His mercies are new every morning.
And on that note, good night.
Thanks to vague ignorance of copyright law,
you can listen to Tenth Avenue North's "Oh My Dear" here!
-------------
I'm a romantic, and I love me a good love song. And most of the time, I'm in enough of a romantic-y, day-dreamy mood that I can picture getting sung to by my future husband. But tonight, I guess it just isn't one of those nights. And while a love song is stuck in my head, for the moment I can only hear it as it would be sung by Jesus.
"Oh, my dear, I'll wait for you.
grace tonight will pull us through:
until the tears have left your eyes,
until the fears can sleep at night,
until the demons that you're scared of
disappear inside;
until the guilt begins to crack
and the weight falls from your back,
oh, my dear, I'll keep you in My arms tonight."
The songwriter explains how it came to him, after a conversation with a then-girlfriend, and how it made him think of James 5:16, about the need to confess ourselves to each other, and I think this is true, and a totally valid basis for a song. But I think, like most love songs, this one works on another level, too. I think we can get so stuck in our own heads, so convinced that we need to keep up a facade, and God's sitting here, waiting, gently asking how long are we going to keep trying to fake it till we make it.
It's been one of those days where I've been frustrated, so I've resorted to complaining and whining for a good deal of the day. And I hate that, because at the time it feels like I've vented and I feel better, but at the end of the day all I feel like is a whiny little pansy jerk. And sometimes I need to hear that God doesn't hold that against me, that He remembers I'm only dust, that screwing up is allowed, and that His mercies are new every morning.
And on that note, good night.
Thanks to vague ignorance of copyright law,
you can listen to Tenth Avenue North's "Oh My Dear" here!
Monday, March 5, 2012
Trapped in 3x5s (Slice 5)
So I've come back from a mission trip to Jamaica, and lots of wonderful people gave me their financial and prayerful support, and I am incredibly grateful to those people, and want to give them a full report of how amazing the trip was, and how much we saw God work in ourselves and in the people we worked with. But I really don't like summarizing a trip in photographs.
Don't get me wrong, I think photos are wonderful, and I love going through them--mine or other people's (with them--I'm not that much of a creeper)--but especially when you're so newly back from something so awesome, they seem to stand in stark contrast to reality. (Incidentally, I think this may have been a benefit to the pre-digital age of photography. When I was a kid, you came home from a trip, and desperately packaged up your rolls of film in the paper envelopes at the store, and then waited the ETERNITY of days to see what came out. I know there are innumerable benefits to digital photography, but there's something about the death of anticipation that makes my photos less amazing.)
Case in point: the photo below. And this is just one of the 212 photos I just uploaded to Facebook. Just ONE. You see my problem.
Don't get me wrong, I think photos are wonderful, and I love going through them--mine or other people's (with them--I'm not that much of a creeper)--but especially when you're so newly back from something so awesome, they seem to stand in stark contrast to reality. (Incidentally, I think this may have been a benefit to the pre-digital age of photography. When I was a kid, you came home from a trip, and desperately packaged up your rolls of film in the paper envelopes at the store, and then waited the ETERNITY of days to see what came out. I know there are innumerable benefits to digital photography, but there's something about the death of anticipation that makes my photos less amazing.)
Case in point: the photo below. And this is just one of the 212 photos I just uploaded to Facebook. Just ONE. You see my problem.
I don't suppose this is such a great photo, just looking at it. It's blurry, and the light is weird, and you don't really know what you're looking at. But this is Derry, Peggy, and Lorna, our "kitchen angels." Not only did they make us three meals a day for nine days, but they sang for us--during the day, and even at night, when they could have finally gone home and escaped the 28 Americans who had descended on their existence. They sang for us in beautiful, spontaneous harmony. They were wonderful singers, but it was more than that--they sang out of joy, out of freedom from their pasts and their pain, out of marveling in a God who cared for them.
I love this picture because it's so clearly not reality--the light is brighter than it should be, forms are unclear. Reality wouldn't have done it justice, because we weren't dealing with reality when they sang. We got a teaser for heaven from them everyday, and I'm okay that I didn't perfectly capture them as they really are on this earth. It's likely that I won't see these ladies again until I hit heaven's door, and when I do, this is what I'll look for: light, and joy, and raised hands.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Kitchen Therapy (Slice 4)
There is something completely therapeutic about working in the kitchen. I really don't understand people who don't love to cook, as it's something completely ingrained in me. I have a photo (see below) in my current kitchen of me as a child, helping my mother in our kitchen (at the aforementioned Pottersville house), and it makes me smile whenever I see it, that even then I loved this thing. I was thinking of this today, as I spent a couple hours making my dinner. It was a new recipe, and I don't think it'll be a repeat, but I was smiling to myself at how I was enjoying it.
It's a sensory thing, for one: the sizzle and hiss--smell, sound, feel--of onions hitting the hot cast iron, the way they turn a new color as they're stirred; the way my chef's knife organizes the disorder of spinach leaves into uniform strips of green; the way flour and butter thicken milk to a bubbling gravy. These are simple things, and I love them for it. I love that, given enough time in my kitchen, all other stress can pass from my head. I love trying new things, learning new things, and the feel of success and accomplishment when it turns out. (I don't really mind when it doesn't--so long as it's edible, which it generally is.)
I joke with people that I am a not-so-secret fifties housewife, minus the husband. I love nothing more than cooking for other people--one person or a crowd. A friend identified it as a love language, and I had to agree--it's a way I demonstrate love, compassion, hospitality. And don't get me wrong, there are days when I don't feel like cooking, but in general, it's something I look forward to, even--especially--after a crazy day.
This same friend and I were laughing the other day at the idea of either of us settling down with a man who only ate pizza and hamburgers. A marriage with such a man would never work--he would starve in my kitchen. I don't try to nail down particulars with God about the man He has for me, but one thing has to be certain: he's an adventurous (and enthusiastic) eater--or he'll learn to be with me.
(Incidentally, that's Mewie--also mentioned in yesterday's slice--in the bottom right. A cat is a necessary kitchen companion...)
It's a sensory thing, for one: the sizzle and hiss--smell, sound, feel--of onions hitting the hot cast iron, the way they turn a new color as they're stirred; the way my chef's knife organizes the disorder of spinach leaves into uniform strips of green; the way flour and butter thicken milk to a bubbling gravy. These are simple things, and I love them for it. I love that, given enough time in my kitchen, all other stress can pass from my head. I love trying new things, learning new things, and the feel of success and accomplishment when it turns out. (I don't really mind when it doesn't--so long as it's edible, which it generally is.)
I joke with people that I am a not-so-secret fifties housewife, minus the husband. I love nothing more than cooking for other people--one person or a crowd. A friend identified it as a love language, and I had to agree--it's a way I demonstrate love, compassion, hospitality. And don't get me wrong, there are days when I don't feel like cooking, but in general, it's something I look forward to, even--especially--after a crazy day.
This same friend and I were laughing the other day at the idea of either of us settling down with a man who only ate pizza and hamburgers. A marriage with such a man would never work--he would starve in my kitchen. I don't try to nail down particulars with God about the man He has for me, but one thing has to be certain: he's an adventurous (and enthusiastic) eater--or he'll learn to be with me.
(Incidentally, that's Mewie--also mentioned in yesterday's slice--in the bottom right. A cat is a necessary kitchen companion...)
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