I'm having a rather challenging day.
Not much sleep.
I spent the first couple hours I was awake laying on my couch, and praying. I also spent the first couple hours I was awake working not to toss my cookies.
Mice.
(does anyone know how to arm a mousetrap? the diagrams are less than helpful.)
lack of sleep and mice means that I bought groceries I don't actually need. Like balsamic vinegar. who knew that I bought a bottle of that the last time shopped? (good thing it keeps).
My emotions are all over the place.
I'm trying favorite methods of self-medicating. Except my all-time favorite method (sugar - particularly in chocolate or cake form) isn't available.
So, I went to a bookstore. This time I made it out easy. Only $30, and two titles. One on pilgrimage. One on miracles. Because I could use a few miracles, and know some people who could use some too. And because I know someone who is currently walking the pilgrimage in Spain the other book is about (and it has a foreword and endorsement from Eugene Peterson), and I'm fascinated by pilgrimage.
I'm eating one of my grandma's homemade hot-crossed buns (minus the icing cross). They taste best toasted, with butter (or occasionally cheese) melted on them.
Eventually I'll curl up and write really honestly in a journal.
But for now, a bottle of water, and episode of M*A*S*H* (another favorite form of emotional release for me). Maybe a book, or a bit of a computer game.
Errands with my mom this afternoon.
Rascal Flatts concert with my brothers tonight. I need to laugh. Rascal Flatts put on a great show - and I laughed until my stomach hurt last time. I'm glad for the chance to hang with my brothers.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Twisted Sense of Humor
Okay, here's the deal... if you get offended easily by sexual humor, or crude language, you shouldn't go to this e-card site. But I'm in a twisted sort of mood today, and needing to laugh at something ridiculous and cynical, because if I don't laugh, I'll cry. So, if you have a slightly twisted sense of humor, then you might enjoy being able to send e-cards with captions such as these:
For Friendship:
For Friendship:
- You'd merit very kind words in my suicide note.
- Let's agree to disagree and quietly resent each other.
- Please be my excuse for not showing up to something.
- I love it when you tell a story 368 times
- We hate all the same people
- I couldn't get through Mondays without knowing you're equally miserable
- I hope your 40 days of shame, penitence and self-denial are going well
- Lent is when I determine which addictions I still have some control over
- Adorable candy will help distract us from the astounding horror of a man being nailed to a cross
- If you really loved me, you would say it on my facebook wall
- I love you like a cannibal loves human flesh
- I'm glad you recognize how terrible your life would be without me
- We've decided to change the name of this department in order to fix all its problems
- I'm intrigued by your cubicle knick-knacks
- Our health plan covers half the therapy sessions I need, so plan on me being half-insane
- I love pretending I have the courage to quit my job
- It's my meeting and I'll cry if I want to
Awake? and mice?
I'm awake.
After approximately 3 hours of sleep.
Does that even count as enough to be called a "night's sleep"?
Does that even count as awake?
I'm sitting and praying, and hoping to fall back to sleep on my couch.
Also. I have mice. Or at least a mouse. In my house. (bad rhyme - did I mention I only got three hours of sleep?)
I was sitting in my chair in the corner of my bedroom last night, when I noticed movement in my closet. The third time I saw it, there was a mouse attached.
I'm really excited to find myself living somewhere with rodents.
25 years in Calgary, and we've only ever had one mouse (and that was in the garage). Now, I have one in my closet. Fantastic.
As soon as it's not 7:30 am any more, I'll be phoning my dad and asking for mouse traps.
I'm not really any better with dead rodents than live ones.
My roommate - who grew up in Africa and is a bit more used to creepy-crawly things is leaving any minute for a week long road trip.
Which means I get to deal with the mice issue all by myself.
After approximately 3 hours of sleep.
Does that even count as enough to be called a "night's sleep"?
Does that even count as awake?
I'm sitting and praying, and hoping to fall back to sleep on my couch.
Also. I have mice. Or at least a mouse. In my house. (bad rhyme - did I mention I only got three hours of sleep?)
I was sitting in my chair in the corner of my bedroom last night, when I noticed movement in my closet. The third time I saw it, there was a mouse attached.
I'm really excited to find myself living somewhere with rodents.
25 years in Calgary, and we've only ever had one mouse (and that was in the garage). Now, I have one in my closet. Fantastic.
As soon as it's not 7:30 am any more, I'll be phoning my dad and asking for mouse traps.
I'm not really any better with dead rodents than live ones.
My roommate - who grew up in Africa and is a bit more used to creepy-crawly things is leaving any minute for a week long road trip.
Which means I get to deal with the mice issue all by myself.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Reading at just the right moments...
This is my 1000th blog post, and it seems fitting to devote it to books that have changed my life or my way of thinking.
Have you ever read a book that came at just the right time in your journey - speaking into the places you are occupying in ways that astonish you with their piercing depths and insights?
It has happened to me a number of times over the years.
The moment I was searching desperately to understand if there really was a Holy Spirit, and what difference that made anyway, and my then pastor sent me to the bookstore on a mission to buy a book titled, "Surprised by the Power of the Holy Spirit". I devoured that book in three days, making notes in bold red pen in the margins. Talking back to the chapters in comments at the end. Underlining, circling, and looking up every scriptural reference that Jack Deere, the author made.
The moment when I opened the pages of Renee Altson's "Stumbling Towards Faith" and couldn't close it until I'd finished. When, in the midst of a severe depression, where I went to bed each night and prayed that the Lord would let me die in my sleep that night, I discovered that I was not in fact nearly as alone as I felt. I discovered that there were others out there who were asking the same deeply intense questions as I was.
It happened again while I was traveling at the beginning of this year.
Before I'd left, on the basis of a recommendation of a blog I read (ysmarko), I'd ordered a book online to take along on my trip.
"Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion" by Sara Miles rocked my world. It spoke to the deep themes I was thinking about and beginning to work through as I traveled. In that way that can only be ordained by God, in just the moment I would be working through a topic or idea, the next words that Miles wrote would speak directly to those thoughts.
I'm presently on my second trip through "Take This Bread" and I'm finding the same thing happening again. The Lord is using a book that few in the circles I grew up in would even consider reading. A book written by a radical left-wing lesbian journalist, who walked into a church one day, took communion, and met Jesus, and now spends her days feeding the poor through a food pantry around the altar of the church where she first took communion.
Tonight, I located online several articles by Miles, all of which are written in the strikingly poignant style of her book, and all of which are speaking to things I'm thinking about these days as well. I'll link to each article and tell you what part of my thoughts they're speaking to.
By Water and By Fire (thoughts on baptism)
Ashes and Dust (thoughts from Ash Wednesday 2007)
Like Lambs Among Wolves (thoughts on violence)
Anatomy of Reconciliation (thoughts on a broken world)
Miles' book begins with the following two paragraphs, and I can't recommend strongly enough that you pick up a copy and make your way through her thoughts on bread and food and war and prayer.
One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, at a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans - except that up until that moment I'd lead a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.
Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I'd scorned and work I'd never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food - indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized that what I'd been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.
And so I did. I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I'd experienced.
Have you ever read a book that came at just the right time in your journey - speaking into the places you are occupying in ways that astonish you with their piercing depths and insights?
It has happened to me a number of times over the years.
The moment I was searching desperately to understand if there really was a Holy Spirit, and what difference that made anyway, and my then pastor sent me to the bookstore on a mission to buy a book titled, "Surprised by the Power of the Holy Spirit". I devoured that book in three days, making notes in bold red pen in the margins. Talking back to the chapters in comments at the end. Underlining, circling, and looking up every scriptural reference that Jack Deere, the author made.
The moment when I opened the pages of Renee Altson's "Stumbling Towards Faith" and couldn't close it until I'd finished. When, in the midst of a severe depression, where I went to bed each night and prayed that the Lord would let me die in my sleep that night, I discovered that I was not in fact nearly as alone as I felt. I discovered that there were others out there who were asking the same deeply intense questions as I was.
It happened again while I was traveling at the beginning of this year.
Before I'd left, on the basis of a recommendation of a blog I read (ysmarko), I'd ordered a book online to take along on my trip.
"Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion" by Sara Miles rocked my world. It spoke to the deep themes I was thinking about and beginning to work through as I traveled. In that way that can only be ordained by God, in just the moment I would be working through a topic or idea, the next words that Miles wrote would speak directly to those thoughts.
I'm presently on my second trip through "Take This Bread" and I'm finding the same thing happening again. The Lord is using a book that few in the circles I grew up in would even consider reading. A book written by a radical left-wing lesbian journalist, who walked into a church one day, took communion, and met Jesus, and now spends her days feeding the poor through a food pantry around the altar of the church where she first took communion.
Tonight, I located online several articles by Miles, all of which are written in the strikingly poignant style of her book, and all of which are speaking to things I'm thinking about these days as well. I'll link to each article and tell you what part of my thoughts they're speaking to.
By Water and By Fire (thoughts on baptism)
Ashes and Dust (thoughts from Ash Wednesday 2007)
Like Lambs Among Wolves (thoughts on violence)
Anatomy of Reconciliation (thoughts on a broken world)
Miles' book begins with the following two paragraphs, and I can't recommend strongly enough that you pick up a copy and make your way through her thoughts on bread and food and war and prayer.
One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, at a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. A routine Sunday activity for tens of millions of Americans - except that up until that moment I'd lead a thoroughly secular life, at best indifferent to religion, more often appalled by its fundamentalist crusades. This was my first communion. It changed everything.
Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all my expectations to a faith I'd scorned and work I'd never imagined. The mysterious sacrament turned out to be not a symbolic wafer at all but actual food - indeed, the bread of life. In that shocking moment of communion, filled with a deep desire to reach for and become part of a body, I realized that what I'd been doing with my life all along was what I was meant to do: feed people.
And so I did. I took communion, I passed the bread to others, and then I kept going, compelled to find new ways to share what I'd experienced.
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