My So-Called Life

Thursday, September 29, 2005

My friend Anne

In order to distract myself from the fact that I am still, after 43 job applications, in job purgatory and that the cable has been turned off today (horror of horrors!), I have been reading some of Anne Lamott's stuff on Salon.com.

I love Anne because she reminds me to "Surrender; give up, breathe, eat. Put your own oxygen mask on first. Pray, even if you think you are an atheist: You cannot know if you really are, until you've had a sick or colicky baby. There is not much fixing, or controlling, or saving people on this earth. There is only listening, seeking wise counsel, trying to help, and rest. There's only now. There's only the exact shape we're in right here."

And that dancing is important. "Last week, when I first came up with this theory -- that conquering this one challenge could lead to small miracles and restoration and to getting our country back from these infidels -- I was in church. The problem is that I often get confused there, and think that truth and beauty always win out in the end; that we cry out for answers, and God gives them to us: Love everyone, breathe, show up, sit outside, dance, stop sucking your stomach in. Try not to kill anyone today. And dance around a little very day. Why? Because it helps. It is part of living: In African Catholic churches, people dance on the way up to communion, even the nuns."

And that hope through the mess is hard but necessary, and that God doesn't take sides.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Hermit

I realized that I haven't left the house since Sunday night. I don't even go outside to check the mail. Is that bad?

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Read this

I'm still not sure what to say about Hurricane Katrina. But I think David Brooks has some good things to say about rebuilding.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

My mother has always said

that creativity is mostly knowing where to steal the good ideas from. That said, I stole this link from my brother's blog. I think it's worth a read.

Quotes

I really want to write about what I've been doing the past two weekends, about helping out with hurricane relief, but for some reason I just haven't found the motivation or the right words or something.

So I think I'll just leave you with some good quotes. I really can't be expected to do more, there's quite the thunderstorm outside (and I haven't really experienced one of those since over a year ago).

"Wild women will be the first ones the Lord gonna learn how to fly." ~Ida Carr

"Perhaps the past is never really gone, but always a part of the present. Lingering there in the quietness, I gathered up the people, the places, the little fragments of another time." ~Helen Thames Raley

"Sometimes visible, sometimes not, sometimes devout Christians, sometimes staunchly Jewish. Until our inner love fits into everyone, all we can do is take daily these different shapes." ~Rumi

"As you get older, it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary." ~Ernest Hemingway

"We all have some kind of gene that makes us want to complicate our lives." ~My other best friend

"Lord, grant us passage through these and all our other transitions, teach us to befriend our own unsightly edges so that we may better befriend others, and keep us alive in imagination and courage of heart, that we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal." ~Gail Godwin

Friday, September 09, 2005

Order up, kids!

Wow, these now come in packages of 100! (The site suggests buying enough for each family in your church.) I mean, where else can you find bumper stickers about BOTH gay marriage and Terri Schiavo?! Score!

Thursday, September 08, 2005

This needs no introduction

"There needs to be more boys with balls." ~My best friend

Monday, September 05, 2005

Revisiting

Read this again. Never has Auden been so appropriate.