Silence

a week of no words.

unexplained, not on purpose,

the silence just descending.

stories stopping mid sentence,

poems hanging

mid thought

mid breath

mid wish

words clinging by ragged fingernails to what

was.

The Best Christmas Card. Ever.

{the front - it didn't scan very well because it's three dimensional}

{the inside. . .}

Friendship {Day 15}

Day 15: What kind of friend do you want to be in 2012?

In 2012 I could be a better friend in quite a few ways, with quite a few people – I could be more open. I could be more generous with my spirit. I could be more responsive and less afraid of pain.

But, at least for right now, I'm going to sit right here with my book and my coffee and be a better friend to myself.

Let's Do Lunch {Day 14}

Day 14: If you could have lunch with anyone who would it be?

Only one person? This is easy.

My gramma.

But let's say we get to have a lunch party. . . now here's my invitation list!

Jimmy Carter (he left the Southern Baptist Church because of their treatment of women, among many other things I admire him for!)

Amelia Earhart (I went through a phase in my early teens where I was completely fascinated with her)

Alton Brown (who would cook!)

Maya Angelou (no explanation necessary!)

Jon Stewart (witty, smart, a great conversationalist)

Mary Oliver (having two poets can't be a bad thing)

Marie Alford-Harkey (my extremely bright, interesting friend)

Bill Clinton (we need more men at the party and he would have great stories)

My friend Steve (who I would love to watch work this room!)

Loathing: In Perspective {Day 13}

Day 13: Who or what did you loathe in 2011 and how have you expressed it? {i try to make it a practice not to get too involved with things that bring out loathing. . . but here goes.}

Loathed: {kind of a strong word, don't you think?}

The financial industry in general - corporate banks in particular

Corporate Boards of Director and most CEO's

Television - If you don't count sports, I watch less than an hour a week.

Intolerance

Close-mindedness

Strongly Disliked:

the Republican party

the Tea Party

Fox News - I only get my news from NPR

Bitterness - in people, not food (see: Republicans, Tea Party and Fox News)

Feared:

Nonchalance

Going to the doctor

Just Found to be Bothersome:

The Democratic party (see: nonchalance)

Insomnia

A cough that wouldn't go away

Dogs and mud - when combined in my kitchen

Organized religion (see: Corporate Boards of Director and CEO's)

Pet Peeves:

Wasting time

Liars

Mean people

Bad grammar

Squeamish About:

Dead squirrels

Vomit (mostly the noise that comes just before the vomit, if I'm being specific)

The Bane of my Existence:

Laundry

A dirty kitchen floor (see: dogs and mud)

Middle age spread

Getting up too early (see: insomnia)

Fear

Loathing (see: wasting time)

Fear {Day 12}

Day 12: What scared you this year? Did it teach you anything new about yourself?

Standing still and remembering the things I’ve lost.

Moving forward and forgetting the things I’ve found.

The black and white that can be truth.

The fact that grey is most often more like it.

Not knowing.

Knowing too much.

I learned to balance the neither/both –

the tension that is the space between

true

and

false.

Less {Day11}

Day 11: What do you need less of in 2012?

i can pick many things
 the whole world could do without in 2012:

war. poverty. hunger.

intolerance. abuse. disease.

hatred. cruelty. disaster.

violence. indifference.

inertia. lies.

::

after that is resolved,

all the things i don’t need?

well, they’re just

things.

More {Day 10}

Day 10: What do you wish you had done more of in 2011?

::

laughed until tears poured down my face.

moved faster and harder and further.

watched the shadows dance.

::

hugged.

::

believed.

laid in the grass and stared at the clouds.

trusted in the grace of the divine.

::

said i love you.

::

listened to all of the music that i love.

worried less and smiled more.

read books until the wee hours of the morning.

::

accepted.

::

held hands beneath the stars.

spent lazy nowhere-to-be time with my family.

given less time to work and more time to love.

::

kissed.

::

ignored the clock and the calendar.

invited the birds inside.

collected all the words that spill from my mind.

::

nothing.

::

Superpower! {Day 9}

Day 9: What was your 2011 superpower?

Smack in the throes of a year that I didn't really feel like myself in many ways the kitchen remained my place of contentment. I come from a long line of women who can cook and I find the kitchen a place of rituals that are comforting. From making a cup of tea to putting together a birthday dinner for company, there is nowhere that I feel more at ease than in the kitchen.

I think the challenge for the coming year is to push myself by relying less on recipes and more on creativity when I cook. I'm slowing moving away from following a recipe step by step to thinking intuitively about what should come next and what might make a nice flavor combination.

On Saturday, Ali and I were in the car listening to The Splendid Table with Lynn Rosetto Kasper on NPR. She is such a poet with food and she was explaining to a young man who wanted to impress his girlfriend with a meal how he could easily make Fettucini Alfredo. She laid out the steps, without amounts of ingredients, just beautiful descriptions. I looked over at Ali and she (who can't cook a lick) was entranced. She looked at me and said, "I want that!" We got the ingredients and with very little help from me, she did it.

I feel at home in the kitchen. And I like that.

My Best {Day 8}

Day 8: What was your best photograph this year?

The judge at the Hancock County Fair thought it was this one and gave it a blue ribbon in the Human Interest category. I don't think it's all that great.

I like this one better.

And this one.

And this one too. But for different reasons. . . ;)

Ordinary Joy {day 7}

Angel in the Window, a photo by piketanya on Flickr.

Day 7: Take us back to a day this year that you experienced joy.

I thought of quite a few days this past year that joy found me. The morning we did our first positive pregnancy test. The afternoon I was sure I got the new job and could barely see to drive through my tears. Watching Samson play in the water at Donnell Pond. Seeing the cardinal on the roof and watching him, watching me.

I know lots of people who are busy chasing joy.

I try to let joy find me. But I have to pay attention.

It usually finds me in the ordinariness.

It finds me in the kitchen making dinner and noticing the scent of the tomatoes when they are ripe and good. It finds me in the dancing snowflakes illuminated only in the streetlights in front of our house at night. It finds me in the muddy footprints of a dog, so excited to come in and get his bone that he can't wait to get his feet wiped off. It finds me in the silence of a flickering candle. It finds me in a song.

And ordinary joy found me one day, late in the summer, driving home with a car full of dogs tired from the park. We passed a country church and out of the corner of my eye I saw an angel with her back to the window. She looked so beautiful and yet so perfectly mundane.

I wondered what she was waiting for, standing there in the window like that.

Maybe it was to show us joy.

Addition Through Subtraction {Day 6}

Day 6: What have you let go of this year? {the need to understand everyone else's noise} And what has that subtraction added to your life? {a little more peaceful silence}

a bird is my muse and her name is silence.

she makes her nest in inconvenient places

and i have to track her down and remind her

that her home should be with me.

i look her in the eye and i search for truth.

i expect her to look back at me and

we wait to see who will blink first.

i want to be a teller of truths.

hurtful,

funny,

sad and quick.

i follow her flights

and i write what she tells me

on the palms of my hands.

sometimes these truths fade

and sometimes they get mixed into

all the lifelines that crisscross

like star paths in the evening sky.

i mark the curves of the universe

and i hold my palms open

waiting for the all that is real to appear

Sound Track {Reverb 11 : Day 5}

Day 5: What was your soundtrack for 2011? What songs were on repeat most?

This one was tough for me because I love music so much. To be honest, besides writing, music is my primary form of worship.

1. Through Smoke by Needtobreathe

Why it means something to me - there are an awful lot of people who chose to believe what is convenient instead of asking for what is true

2. Timshel by Mumford and Sons

Why it means something to me - life gives you choices. you get to choose how you react to pain. you transform it or it defines you. it's as simple {and as hard} as that.

3. Where I Stood - Missy Higgins

4. Undo Me by Jennifer Knapp

Why it means something to me - christian. loved her music for the last ten years. then this year she came out as a lesbian and released a new album. Undo Me is my fave. . . and did I mention she likes girls?

Five Guilty Pleasures {Reverb 11 : Day 4}

{i had trouble finding things i feel guilty about. . .so mostly, these are just pleasures. . .except for number 5!}

1. I start every day by waking up and finding Sammy at the foot of the bed. He feels me stirring and wiggles his way up to lay tightly up against my body with his head on my chest. I spend the first five minutes of my day petting and him and scratching his ears and generally bonding with him before our collective six feet hit the floor for the first time in the morning. I read somewhere that doing something that brings quiet joy adds to the symphony of the universe. In these moments I hear music.

2. Sometimes I complain about being up at 4:30 in the morning but secretly I like it. I enjoy the solitude of spending the first few hours of the day alone. In the spring and summer I can't wait to have coffee on the porch, watching the sun rise and listening to the birds wake and sing.

3. Drinking orange juice straight out of the carton, with the refrigerator door still open. {it tastes sweeter that way}

4. Homemade peppermint and eucalyptus soap. It makes me smile every morning in the shower, not only because it smells heavenly, but because I made it myself. Making soap is like cooking on steroids - you get to wear elbow length, extra heavy duty gloves and goggles!

5. Nutella {need I say more?}

A Single Moment {Reverb 11 :: Day 3}

Day 3: Tell about one moment in time this year that you will never forget.

At some point in the summer I started reading "God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us" by L.L. Burkat. The premise of the book is that the author spent time sitting, every day - rain or shine, snow or sunshine - in her back yard. She did it, looking for God. Her assertion that there were other ways than the classical spiritual disciplines that one could experience the presence of God was intriguing to me.

So, over the summer we redid our front porch to make it a little more "sitting friendly." We put a small table and two chairs on our tiny porch, looking out over our gardens. We started eating all our meals out there and I started just sitting and watching for God. In the waning days of summer we took to calling our little porch refuge "Paradise."

The exact moment that I will never forget came one evening after dinner. The tiny table had been cleared. The sun was setting and I was studying the potted plants right in front of me. Earlier I had noticed that we had a "volunteer" tomato plant that had found life in the pot of rosemary. It was stubborn little tomato, growing taller by the day and, even though it had absolutely no chance of ever bearing fruit because of its late start in life, it was busy making all kinds of little tomato blossoms as though it had all the time in the world. I had been watching that stubborn little plant, dancing in the breeze for weeks, but that night I noticed its shadow.

The shadow of that plant was beautiful. I saw the outline of every leaf. Every bump and wiggled stem. Every mapline of life was right there in front of me in black and white relief. For just a few moments I saw that tomato plant as more than the sum of its parts. It became art. And at that moment I woke up to the artistic power of shadows.

Now I see patterns in shadows everywhere. And often they are far more beautiful than what gave birth to them.

Leonardo DaVinci once said, "Do not despise my opinion when I remind you that it should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes, or a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. . . By indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions."

She Will Hear A Different Song {Reverb 11: Day 2}

Day 2: If you could chose one thing your child will do or experience in a different way than you have, what would it be and why?

the hymn that i heard

sung by a tired choir in

tunes that were flat with accusation

sharp with prickles of fear

who do you think you are

you are no one

you are nothing

you are just a girl

the refrain of your childhood

to be hummed and sung

shouted and whispered -

you are good

you are wise

you are loved

it will be written in your palms

embossed on your heart

you are good

you are wise

you are loved

now

and every tomorrow

Wanderer {Reverb 11::Day 1}

"May you finish 2011 well and may 2012 be filled with amazing possibilities."

I saw this as a Facebook post on a friends page the other day and I wondered how I could live this into reality for myself. Nothing was really resounding with my heart. Until this morning. Surfing around the internet at 4 AM on a sleepless {night? morning?} I found these writing prompts. One for every day of December, encouraging the writer to look back at 2011 with honest clarity and look forward to living 2012 with some kind of intentional joy.

Maybe because I've felt lost since May, perhaps because I need an assigment to feel motivated, my soul wants to "finish 2011 well."

Day 1 - One Word. Encapsulate the year 2011 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2012 for you?

My one word came easily. It's wanderer. Not a word I'm comfortable with and certainly not a word I would have chosen for myself at the beginning of 2011. I like paths. I resonate with plans and stability; directions and clear-cut formulas. {hence needing writing prompts to actually plant the seat of my pants in a chair and put pen to paper to clear out my head}

And this year has had few formulas, directions or prompts.

I got a new job - which I adore - but getting that new job meant more hours, more stress and less time for pondering and writing. It also meant leaving something I was comfortable with and moving into this unknown year of learning the expectations of new tasks, new people and new routines.

I navigated the very turbulent waters of extreme financial stress with no one to tell me how it would all resolve itself in the end. To date, this has been the most gut-wrenching, failure-inducing, painful thing of my life.

It seems, in this past year, that I've left the institution of church and am wandering in this new place of finding a spiritual home that doesn't oppress and choke my soul.

Together, Ali and I are wandering the path that may {or may not} lead to motherhood. This year we got pregnant on our first try with artificial insemination and miscarried about a month and a half later. Since, we've tried three more times without success.

And so, I arrive at the beginning of December bone-tired.

But with this nagging desire to "finish 211 well and enter into 2012 recognizing amazing possibilities."

As I sit here and wrestle with these words, who's journey from my brain to fingers seems so rusty and slow, the phrase "all who wander are not lost" comes to me. Turns out those are the thoughts of J.R.R. Tolkien. And his words made me weep - sitting at my kitchen table in my pajamas, with my wild hair, old-lady reading glasses and thoughts about how hard it is to be a wanderer.

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

And, for today, I will sit with these words and ponder the "fire that shall be woken" in 2012.