Not What I Would Have You Be

Notes:

* Last night I had a dream in which Natalie drove up to me in her Volvo wagon. We were in Hamilton and she looked happy and healthy and as I was running toward her car I was yelling to the people around to take a photo of me with her, to show the world her happy and healthy face, to have proof of her there with me. It was so vivid. I woke up exhausted.

* I got a new phone the other week, an HTC Droid. I am in love with this device. I was already in a very serious, almost unhealthy relationship with my old phone and now that I've upgraded to Verizon's version of the iPhone I am hopelessly committed to my tiny technology. A few weeks ago I had several friends in town and we did the massive brewery tour known as Ducks & Bears. At the first brewery I got up to get samples and while I was gone, my friends decided to hide my phone and see how long it took for me to notice. Verdict? 120 seconds. Actually it was about 45 seconds, but it took me those extra seconds to ask them about it. See? Possibly unhealthy.

* I'm trying to get better about being honest about how I feel. For a few years I've been trying to be someone who was more relaxed than I actually am, someone who was good with maybes and "let's see where this goes" and know what? I'm not. I'm terrible at that. No mas! I'm embracing my need for definition!

* I know I'm not too funny on my blog, but I swear I'm pretty funny in real life. At least I think I'm funny. I crack myself up every single day. I had a thought about Miami Sound Machine like four days ago that I'm still laughing about.

* My cubicle is a serious shitshow. I need to put away some files; it looks like a box of papers vomited all over my desk. That is both truthful and kinda metaphorical.

* Know what is a great damn song? "Alligator" by Tegan and Sara. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love those wonder twins. My current favorite song to play on guitar is "Call it Off" by them; the line "Maybe I would've been something you'd be good at" just kills me. Also: they are wicked funny.

* There is a game on my phone called Drop. Betsy currently has the high score between the two of us. I finally beat her last night but this morning she pulled ahead again. It is slightly embarrassing how badly I want to beat her at this (guess who needs a new hobby).

* Natalie Merchant, yes she of 10,000 Maniacs fame, is back with a new concept album and what I've heard of it I've really enjoyed. She's taken poems from the 19th and early 20th centuries and turned them into song. Check it out.

* I'm exchanging social media classes for free wine. I met the general manager of a local wine bar, talked to her about Twitter and here we are. Best idea ever.

* 29 is coming up quick. What do I do about that?

* Last week I had a speed Scrabble/margarita night with the ladies. These are entirely necessary and should happen as often as possible. I pulled muscles laughing. Please note: jahats is not a word. Ahem.

* Friday night my friend Andrew's band had a show at the Grey Eagle. It was fabulous. I was super impressed with their opening act, Boys of Summer. Reminds me of Hem with a dash of Innocence Mission. Check 'em. Seriously great.

* Saw this quote today from Madeline L'Engle and I love it: "Because you are not what I would have you be, I bind myself to who, in truth, you are." That sounds like what I suspect love is but I don't know.

* My father called me the other day to hear my analysis on the Redskins signing McNabb. I talked for 10 minutes straight about it and he said, "Yup, can always count on you for better analysis than the commentators." Football is a way we connect, a language we both speak, so that was a huge compliment.

* I'm missing people even when they are standing next to me. Is there a name for this?

* This blog is brought to you by the letter N and the number 9.

Junk, Stuff, Other

So our Quizzo team came in 2^nd place Monday night. That is the highest we've ever scored, and we won $20 in gift certificates. Go us. Though Jane and I have decided we should call it Quizz-O 210 (like 90210 only more Ashevillian) because of the drama that seems to occur with the group of regulars we have. And unfortunately by drama I mean it is usually concerning me. Crap.

Yet another thing I learned from the party on Saturday: “Loose lips sink ships” and if that's true there's an admiral out there who is pissed off at me for sinking his entire fleet. I have no filter about myself. Not good. So if I told you something on Saturday that sounds like it may be one of my own personal secrets, zip it friend. Thanks. Yup, never running for public office or joining the FBI. Whew.

Another song to never play at a wedding: “Nasty” by Janet Jackson

The other night I had a dream in which Ronald McDonald was sitting on top of a refrigerator in a tiny basement apartment playing the pan flute while I sang “Forever in Blue Jeans” by Neil Diamond. I can assure you I was neither on drugs or drunk when I had this dream. Something may be seriously wrong with my subconscious.

Yesterday my mom excitedly called me to tell me she had big news about two of my friends getting engaged. I told her I knew, that I'd actually helped with some of the planning of the proposal; that they'd called me the next morning. She seemed very disappointed that she couldn't provide gossip about my own friends, both of whom she doesn't actually know. Well done Mom, well done.

So all five of the kids are going to be together right before Christmas. This hasn't happened since 2001 and has only ever happened twice. For good reason. I'm bringing the following: (A) a helmet. (B) flask. (C) iPod. (D) camera. And not only will there be the five of us, but one in-law, four small children and my mother. Wow. Callin' Maury Povich, see if he makes house calls.

It's official: I am finally working at J.Crew. Only took a month and a half. Literally. You'd think I was trying to go be professor or a secret agent, but no, just a retail lackey at a clearance store. Start on Thursday.

“The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us. All through the great stories, heavenly love is lavished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves.” --Madeline L'Engle. I posted this one when she died back in October, but I find it so applicable to my present. There are days when my imperfections and missteps are more glaring and those days have been frequent as of late. It's good to be reminded that even as I am at those moments, I am loved.

The Beauty of Matter

I just pulled up to the grocery store on Friday afternoon when NPR did a little report on the death of Madeline L'Engle, most notably the author of A Wrinkle in Time. I did my shopping, got back in my car and cried a little bit. I confess I never read Wrinkle, but what I have read, and read yearly, is Glimpses of Grace, a daily devotional composed of L'Engle's writings, and through it she became very dear to me. I'm taking this tiny bit of virtual real estate and letting it be a memorial for such a prolific and passionate writer. Some of my favorite quotes:

“It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation, uses precisely the same tools and rules as the artist; he works with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter; feel another human hand or the velvet of a puppy's ear; taste food prepared and offered in love; smell—oh, so many things: food, sewers, each other, flowers, books new-mown grass, dirt...
Here, in the offerings of creation, the oblations of story and song, are our glimpses of truth.”

“If we look at the makeup of the word disaster, dis-aster, we see dis, which means separation, and aster, which means star. So dis-aster is separation from the stars. Such separation is disaster indeed. When we are separated from the stars, the sea, each other, we are in danger of being separated from God...The house of God is not a safe place. It is a cross where time and eternity meet, and where we are—or should be—challenged to live more vulnerably, more interdependently. Where, even with light streaming in rainbow colours through the windows, we can listen to the stars.”

“When we deny our wholeness, when we repress part of ourselves, when we are afraid of our own darkness, then the dark turns against us, turns on us, becomes evil. Just as the intellect when it is not informed by the heart becomes vicious, so the intuition, the subconscious, when it is forcibly held below the surface, becomes wild, and until we look at it and call it by name, our own name, it can devour us.”

“We were bought with a price, and what has cost God so much cannot be cheap for us.”

“In a world where we're brainwashed by the media into thinking that life should be easy and painless and reasonable, it is not easy or painless or reasonable to be a Christian—that is, to be one who actually dares to believe that the power that created all the galaxies, all the stars in their courses, limited that power to the powerlessness of an ordinary human baby.
That's not reasonable.
It is equally unreasonable to believe that this ordinary baby grew into a man who was totally human and simultaneously totally divine. Who was, as the Athanasian Creed affirms, totally incomprehensible.”

“I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is; I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities; I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the world “Christian” means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who, today, can recognize a Christian because of “how those Christians love one another”?”

“Oh I am in awe of the maker of galaxies and geese, stars and starfish, mercury and men (male and female). Sometimes it is rapturous awe; sometimes it is the numinous dread Jacob felt. Sometimes it is the humble awe of knowing that ultimately I belong to God, to the Maker whose thumb print is on each one of us. And that is blessing.”

“The glorious message of Scripture is that we do not have to be perfect for our Maker to love us. All through the great stories, heavenly love is lavished on visibly imperfect people. Scripture asks us to look at Jacob as he really is, to look at ourselves as we really are, and then realize that this is who God loves.”

“Cardinal Suhard says, “To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery. It means to live in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist.”

“And then there is a time in which to be, simply to be, that time in which God quietly tells us who we are and who he wants us to be. It is then that God can take our emptiness and fill it up with what he wants, and drain away the business with which we inevitably get involved in the dailiness of human living.”

“It is a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet and what is sand. It stops us from taking anything for granted.”

Hands down the best devotional I've ever done. I love to learn though living and not scripture alone. L'Engle had a deep, intimate, profoundly personal and real relationship with God; I hope the same for myself.