Infusion, in other words - I'm steeping

Image found at Kobos Coffee.

This weekend is time for me to steep a bit. I'm on retreat and on Friday I was having a hard time disengaging from my life as I know it. I came across a great scripture on my blogging friend Dianne's blog and it hit me right between the eyes.

Matthew 6:33-34:
Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.
Don’t worry about missing out.
You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now,
and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.
God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes. (The Message)

The first word stands out to me so much. I love tea and know that a good tea needs to steep just right in order to be perfect. Not to short or its weak, not to long or it gets bitter tasting. May I steep in the waters of God in order to be strong, refreshing, fragrant and comforting as a perfect cup of Earl Gray.

Just for the fun of it, if you'd like to know more on how to steep a perfect cup of loose leaf tea - click on this link.

Happy Steeping

I'm not so good at this

Taking a break from the rush of my life.
Going somewhere where I feel no connection to:
faces I know, names I know, places I know.

Should I take a few days? Should I take a few days?

Getting re-focused and establishing space;
to listen, to pause, to wander on a walk with an unspecified pace.

Talking and writing and doing I do best;
but time outs without defined purpose are difficult and challenging quests.

I should take a few days, I should take a few days.

A friend said, you may not know the purpose, but Papa knows the way.
So I suppose I should hang up my drivers seat for a few short days.

Its just a few days, its just a few days.

So I'll make some new friends and relearn to play,
like slumber parties of my youth and its unstructured way.

I will take my few days, I will take my few days.


Image ironically found at a blog called: Mom's time out.

A little blarney is all you need sometimes.

About this time of year in the north east, it's necessary to liven up the cold and greyness around us with a little random fun. So the first Friday evening of March, I'm planning a "Darby O'Gill" movie and fun night at my church. The evening will be complete with a showing of the film, green punch, and a Pot-O-Gold treasure hunt. You never know, I may even need the help from an authentic leprechaun or two.

Any takers?

If so, come on by to First Lutheran on March 6th at 6:30pm. Be sure to wear green and bring a snack to share. Time has come to whoop it up with a little silliness and blarney cause spring is on the way! Hooray.

All this remembering reminded me of something

Ian and I the summer of 1992 - a few months after our wedding. It turns out I had just found out I was just expecting my daughter in this photo.

In the wake of Myspace, Facebook re-connections and looking through old photos last weekend, I stumbled across this poem by Tony Hogland at the Writers Almanac online. His poem reminds me of my youth, I was full of energy, passion, and possibility and I like how his own reflection captures a touch of what I felt at age seventeen. Minus the drunk part of course (Mom), and the fact that we've never driven away from our love for each other (Ian).

I only live twenty or so miles from where I grew up. I lived in the woods, we got our groceries in a literal one-stop-light town, and I still managed to find love. Imagine that. How lovely, even through all its transitions, that the love I met at seventeen is still with me and loves me in return. That is something I'll never take for granted. Thank you Ian for loving me.

Here's to the passion of youth and to having the opportunity to grow up with the love of my youth. What an amazing journey and we're still walking together. :)

History of Desire

by Tony Hoagland

When you're seventeen, and drunk
on the husky, late-night flavor
of your first girlfriend's voice
along the wires of the telephone

what else to do but steal
your father's El Dorado from the drive,
and cruise out to the park on Driscoll Hill?
Then climb the county water tower

and aerosol her name in spraycan orange
a hundred feet above the town?
Because only the letters of that word,
DORIS, next door to yours,

in yard-high, iridescent script,
are amplified enough to tell the world
who's playing lead guitar
in the rock band of your blood.

You don't consider for a moment
the shock in store for you in 10 A.D.,
a decade after Doris, when,
out for a drive on your visit home,

you take the Smallville Road, look up
and see RON LOVES DORIS
still scorched upon the reservoir.
This is how history catches up—

by holding still until you
bump into yourself.
What makes you blush, and shove
the pedal of the Mustang

almost through the floor
as if you wanted to spray gravel
across the features of the past,
or accelerate into oblivion?

Are you so out of love that you
can't move fast enough away?
But if desire is acceleration,
experience is circular as any

Indianapolis. We keep coming back
to what we are—each time older,
more freaked out, or less afraid.
And you are older now.

You should stop today.
In the name of Doris, stop.

"History of Desire" by Tony Hoagland, from Sweet Ruin. © The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. Reprinted with permission.

Dot to dot

Image found at Future Media

Taking a step into uncharted creative territory is always a double-edged sword. There is the risk of criticism and the question of ability or talent on one side, and the reward of connecting an idea, thought, and life experience on the other.

In fifth grade I had a teacher who took the double-edged rick of teaching her students to excel. In the midst of her great effort, she taught me that I had a distinct voice in what I wrote. It's because of her early teaching about poetry and literature that I still write today. To tell the truth, writing is something that has saved my life, many times over. Thank you for teaching me that I have a unique voice Mrs. Hodak.

On days in my childhood and adolescence when I was incredibly sad: like when my sister passed away at the tender age of fifteen, when my family was numb with grief, when I thought that life would have been better for my family had I been the one that had died; writing gave me place to safely express all that pain and loss.

Then again, writing is not exclusive to only expressing pain. Writing is also about sharing the joys in life. Writing for me is a venue of crossing limitations of time, geographic boundaries, social breakdowns, religious differences, and allowed for an intersection of uncanny commonalities of humanity to take place. Writing is something like a dot to dot sheet in a child's activity book. One number traced to the next, or letter in this case, and something new and interesting emerges.

Expressing myself in creatively ultimately is a way and means of connecting with others. There is no joy like the joy of having someone read a poem, listen to a song read an essay or see a painting and find things that connect from that creative expression into their life.

Connecting the dots is what it's all about, dots of pain, joy, anger, love, the ugly and the beautiful. Truth is we need all of what life hands us, and we need a place to share it. My place is in playing dot to dot with words. Yes, writing is a double-edged sword, but it is the place I discovered my voice all those years ago and I will continue to write in order to make contact. Connections will be made, letter by letter, number by number, and dot by dot.


Dot to Dot found here!

Sleeping with bread and soup!

I've been thinking the last few days how it truly takes a community and the participation of many to accomplish great things. I can write up to do lists and make plans for all sorts of things in my own life, but if I don't connect and make contact with others in my "village", what is the point?

The last week or so I'd been working on a fundraiser project with my friend Jeff, owner of Labyrinth Press Company, the students from my church and so many friends and family. We held a "Souper Bowl of Caring" non-perishable good collection and a soup luncheon fundraiser. Jeff made the posters and FOUR different kinds of fantastic vegetarian soup, I made centerpieces and got the odds and ends organized, and the students helped serve lunch and cleaned up after the event on Sunday.

We raised $343.00 that we are going to split between Joint Neighborhood Project and Saint Susan's Center, as well donating some large boxes full of canned goods.

Events like this take a great deal of energy and planning, and I feel this event turned out well due to the overall community involvement in it. So often, I'm tempted to try to do things all by myself. Only when I try to be so independent, I only end up frustrated and exhausted. So today I suppose I'm beginning to learn that and over-independence is what often drains me of life, and community is what gives life to me. It's all about balance, I suppose.

I will hold onto this experience and better try to include and involve others in opportunities like this. This is a case that more cooks in the kitchen make a better meal. bread and soup included.

Thankful for

Today I'm thankful for:

Friends and family that helped, attended, and supported the Souper Bowl of Caring lunch.

Time to rest after a hectic weekend.

Getting over that nasty cold.

Life's connections with people growing and building in relationship to/with each other.

Jeff's Potato and Cheese soup.

Finding the install disks for Mom's and our Mac.

Valentine's Dinner with my husband. :)

God's Grace, always and forever in need of God's grace and love.



Image found at Passionate Writing