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Archive - December, 2011

with all due reverence for the speed bumps of the Portofino parking lot: today, at deeper story

December 29, 2011 in deeper story with 4 Comments

We cut slowly across the parking lot, moving three stores down from the one we were just in. Were we anyone else, we would likely have abandoned the car at the first store and then walked to the second. But we are not like everyone else, so we took the car. We pulled out slowly, we gingerly made the approach.

And we came to the speed bumps.

“Honey, it’s alright. Just go over them slow,” she tells me, but I can see out of the corner of my eye the flicker of trauma remembered shadow her face and wordlessly I take the wheel and turn it left, driving down to the end of the row where I turn right and then right again for the simple sake of avoiding the speed bumps.

The drivers behind us are slightly confused, as two cars that were waiting have already gone over by the time we are back on the other side. If we were like everyone else, we would have driven over the speed Bumps in the parking lot of Portofino like there was nothing to even pause and consider.

But we are not like everyone else.

Keep reading and join me over at Deeper Story today?

have i heard?: one word 2011 in retrospect

December 28, 2011 in oneword2011 with 27 Comments

I sat in the midmorning light of that great armchair in the living room last Christmas and told God that I was planning on giving up on this blog.

I had been writing sparingly, mindlessly, and I was considering that for all my labors to write, to be a writer, I had very little by means of content to show for the vision. I felt it was my calling, but that slippery gloss of feelings finds tarnish easily, and low readership and lower comments meant I spent my days wondering why I even bothered, to the point that I was ready to give it up.

I hadn’t ever quite prayed about my blog before, I hadn’t considered a need to. It, like all other deeds, was a kind of worship, but the worship was in the doing not in the preparation for the doing. Silly, for this is wrong, but I never had cause to really evaluate it. At least until that morning, when the thought drifted across my mind and I accepted it was time to be done and either it was a legitimate prayer or God overheard it and decided to interject, because I felt in the deepness of myself the bold whisper that I needed to keep going, for “It will not be like this next year.”

Like all things with our Creator, that only makes sense now in perspective. At the time I thought it had to do with other things, the least of which was my blog. But somehow that word convinced me to keep writing, to keep striving, and most importantly to bring a kind of painful honesty to this space unlike I had ever done before. It was time to be vulnerable, to be transparent without fear. Appropriately, I stumbled upon Alece’s meme, a challenge to choose a word for the year and intentionally seek God’s working in it. Last year, the word came to me quickly: grow. Continue Reading…

repost: we are all but wounded children

December 27, 2011 in reflections with 0 Comments

I”m taking some days off on the blog to spend time getting ready for the New Year and to reflect and write. Today, I bring you a very popular post from November, one in which I had to answer for twelve hours after I posted, when a loving and wise friend asked how I could write these words and still support something that wasn’t affirming what I had said here. The next day, I blogged about humiltiy, faith, and coming back to trust.

 

 

I sip coffee slowly, eyes wandering down the last page of Nehemiah, the appointed reading for the morning. It is the Feast of All Souls, a day that I admit is yet another aspect of the great Tradition that I have grasped gently, woven into the fabric of my belief, the day in which the faithful departed as a whole are to be remembered. Yet, I find myself not thinking alone on those gone into Light, but those of us here still journeying, those of us who see through a glass darkly, even those who are not yet turned unto Him. All souls, every soul, each and every one. To these my thoughts turn.

By happenstance or Providence, I am spending my morning devotion in a room adjacent to where a gathering of faithful have convened together to sing and to pray. I admit they are a group I have a hard time sympathizing with. Their theological posture oftentimes alarms me, using words in prayer like “allow” when referring to the power of God, as if He were in need of permission. Then there are the songs, full of lines equally unsettling.

An odd place to find oneself on the Feast of All Souls, or perhaps the most fitting place.

We are all but wounded children, carrying around bows and arrows and swords, shooting and swiping at each other as if we knew what it meant, as if we knew why we fought, as if we knew the consequences of the blows. Continue Reading…

the 11 11s of ’11

December 26, 2011 in reflections with 3 Comments

As I did last year, this year I bring you lists that reflect the journey of the past twelve months. These are all recommendations of things I loved, found inspiring, or consider particularly significant to this past year of wandering. This means that some items may be old to me, reread, or watched again. But somehow they mattered, mattered a lot. I could explain each, but that becomes a bit tiresome. There’s always the comment section for that. Except, I will interject and explain, briefly, that in the TV section you may run across a show that makes your jaw drop open that it’s on there. Look, someone get Leighton an Emmy nomination, OK? This isn’t the turn of the century when it was cool to snub Buffy. We’ve come a long way with awards, right?

So, without further ado, 11 lists of 11 things in 2011. 

11 Movies (links to trailers)

11 TV Shows (links to trailers for the season or clips)

the thirty-fourth formica friday

December 23, 2011 in formica friday with 6 Comments

It’s that time again, another Formica Friday, a treasure trove of hodgepodge, random tidbits, and a bit of this and that. In particular, it is the place where I can celebrate the best posts I read this past week and want to share with you.

 

A quote:

I celebrated communion last night at 12:30 AM over coffee and blueberry pancakes.

– Alise Write, “Repost: Let’s Do Lunch”

A list, in which I describe what I am thankful for:
  • Morning Rites at HopePointe Anglican
  • Four hours of laughter, grace, and hope with Anna on Skype
  • Lamb burgers and moscato with Emily marveling at the strangeness of grace
  • Midnight in Paris and Provençal apple cobbler
  • painting in the quite of the night
  • Father Elijah and learning to read for purest joy again
  • Young Adult, which may be the funniest movie I saw all year

Posts, websites, trinkets, and the Internet week in review revue:

  • for stretching her wings in orthodoxy to cover many and for always trusting in Him more than in her own faith, Tamara with “Every New Christmas“
And, as always, an old post from me:
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Have a post from the week you’d like to share? What was your best post this week? Or did you read someone else you just have to let us know about? Leave me a note in the comments below!
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