new normal

Saturday of Easter 7 / Eve of the Day of Pentecost

Last month I attended the Print Week vendor trade show on Thursday morning 25 April, ArtWalk the afternoon of Easter 5—28 April. God commands Israel to re-member their history and re-assemble in a sense [past] events they've experienced, essentially to bring them into the present. God charges the people to recall both devastations and redemptions that have re-created them into the community – and the individuals – they've become. As always, I rode the super-fast express bus 50 downtown to Print Week, which meant walking about .6 miles to the convention center; on my walk I re-imaged when I worked downtown in a former life. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts' housing peeps were at Government Center, so that felt a little different from strolling through downtown San Diego, but the year I worked at the design studio was in the CBD and a blast of a location. Recently this has been all over the 'net, so I'll simply quote to set the pace for the next section of this post:

The Italian immigrants of Roseto, Pennsylvania, ate meatballs fried in lard, gorged on pasta, and smoked, but they had half the risk of heart disease as the rest of the country. Why? Researchers concluded that it was because they lived communally, celebrated regularly, and had a huge network of friends. Dinner party, anyone?

Here's a scant handful of "what really was memorable."

• Prior to my move to Former City, being courted by Historic Inner City Church truly was exciting and kind of a mind-trip (they consider me qualified for this?!), but what were the details of that possible call? I don't recall. But I do remember potluck Thanksgiving Dinner at the HICC parsonage.

• From my last couple of years in Seafaring Town at the end of the last century, when I roomed with Heather, it was "do you want your pasta on a plate or in a bowl?" Aside from some gardening and drawing, sharing meals remains my main memory.

• Later with Nick in City of History, I'll never forget dinner together every evening—in fact, aside from starting to write some again by starting an urban page on the old MSN groups, that's the only thing I remember.

• About the church that since that summer disbanded and recently regathered as a mission in a different form? I enjoyed preparing and leading intercessions for Sunday liturgy, I liked playing organ/piano keyboards those Sundays, but more than anything, midweek evening Bible Study, dinner, and Eucharist humanized and fed me.

Week after week in this town, we have another military farewell, or homecoming, or sometimes one of each. Recently on the national news, we've seen families, friends, and communities literally "come together" from all corners and support each other, stand along side each other, and be there physically, emotionally, on every level for individuals and families who've experienced overwhelming losses and who need to grieve, who need help creating elusive "new normals." In all this I still cannot shake the conviction individuals are supposed to be connected to other people. As Oprah said to the teenager, "You know you can't do life on your own." I remember waiting for a plane or car to pull up; sometimes I was in the car or plane, sometimes someone else was on their way to visit me at my place. Will that happen again? I'm too weary and actually have grown too smart to try to engineer that type of happening again, as I unsuccessfully tried to do for a few years.

Life is about seeking and finding a reasonably good fit amongst people, tasks, and goals. Barring a very cold climate (International Falls, Yukon Territory), I know I could be happy as long as I had human support, a few opportunities to contribute to the greater good. For me it's more about geography and weather and climate than about culture. Even so, how is it that I don't do concerts or museums? Why haven't I for a long time? To start those activities in a new city or town, you need to connect with people; later you can do them by yourself. Education and skills usually literally "buy" purchase certain accoutrements and perks... but I'm well aware of the multitude of free and very-low cost high cultural (remember Edmund Sapir's Kultur?) and ethnic cultural opportunities around here. However, as I wrote at the top of this post, I did go to spring ArtWalk this year. It was fun, but nothing about booth browsing and people watching was enticing enough to convince to go again, unless someone will go with me.

For the past month I've been loving listening to the vireos sing! Bird calls are innate; however, birds need to learn to sing from other birds. They begin with a sub song that's not quite singing, then go on to imitative (of other birds, of course) plastic song (interesting terminology), finally find their own crystallized songs. I'm yearning for a community that will teach me my own song, or help me relearn, or maybe that's remember my song, that will help me start composing new songs. A community of people who will raise me from this death?

Partners

Partners on amazon, with eight chapters, each in two parts: Part One: Neighborhood Revitalization through Partnership; Part Two: Whittier Neighborhood, a Minneapolis Case Study.

More than ten years after its publication in 1982, I received a copy of this soft-cover, 11.7" x 9.1" x 0.8" explorative report on revitalization of the Whittier section of Minneapolis at one of the annual Salt Lake City Neighborhood Conferences. It's printed on heavy, coated paper, and it's packed with narrative, with B&W and color photographs, diagrams, charts, and general inspirations. I'm reading myself and my current situation into some words about the USA from the Prologue that could apply to many individuals:

"This book is about the end of an era and the beginning of a new possibility.
The era it leaves behind was 'on the road,' mobile, going anywhere, celebrating space.
The possibility it welcomes is 'coming home,' rooting, creating a stake, celebrating place.

"Neighborhood is about place. It declares that one special place is the foundation for life's living. America 'on the move' was hard on places, whether prairies or forests or older cities. This is the story of a new generation that came home and found a way to recover a place that had been misused by old-fashioned Americans. It is about a beginning, a possibility, a way people act when place really matters." [iv]

In the wake of famously misguided attempts by government and by private investors to remedy real problems of inner city decay, neighborhood decline, and infrastructure deterioration, Dayton-Hudson (now Target Corporation) partnered with residents, businesses, local government and other entities to help the actual people of Whittier revitalize and reclaim the community for themselves by creating a home, a place to be, during the 1970s. Partners is a fascinating study about people power, grass roots action, and the resurgence of hope and life. Three decades later, this book is hardly dated at all, and still would be useful and instructive for any urban studies, American studies, sociology, or cultural anthropology course.

my amazon review: creating home

Can't-Wait Willow

Legal note - "Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this product for free in hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR. Part 255: 'Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.'"

Can't-Wait Willow! from Shine Bright Kids Series on Amazon; written by Christy Ziglar; illustrated by Luanne Marten.

"Choose Right. Shine Bright.
The first book in a new series about helping children learn how to make good choices. "

link love:
• Always Shine Bright

• Shine Bright Kids on Facebook

• About...

What a beautifully produced book! The front of the dusk jacket features a shiny embossed dye-strike―sparkles on Willow's dress and headband, too! According to Zig Ziglar, uncle of book author Christy Ziglar, "Sometimes you've got to say 'no' to the good, so you can say 'yes' to the best." Yes, but...

Featured character Willow meets a series of challenges, temptations (opportunities?) to purchase something she wants right now with her (necessarily limited) money; as a result, she ends up without enough cash to attend the circus show and buy a coveted cotton candy. In fact, because she makes so many stops along the way, Willow arrives at the circus grounds so late the show is over. Her chance meeting with the circus ringmaster wins her the gift (unearned grace?) of a ticket to the following day's circus show. At the show, Willow gets to enjoy a couple of cotton candy treats, and she gets to ride on the elephant―even better than the purple stuffed elephant she won the previous day by paying to play a game. Redemption?!

I love Luanne Marten's color-filled, whimsical pictures, but from all appearances, she sets the story somewhere in the semi-rural prairielands of the USA or Canada. Both kids and grownups in the story are ethnically diverse, but everything else about them suggests several decades back in time in the semi-rural prairielands of Canada or the USA. For sure a benefit of reading is for kids to use their imaginations on order to place themselves in other places and times, but given the fact Can't-Wait Willow! is supposed to convey and teach a lesson for today, I'm not convinced the illustrations are exactly relatable. I do get the idea of choosing the best over the better, but how on earth does any kid, left to her/his own choices in a normal average day, know what might be in store later on, even when they originally intended to buy a certain good with their money or scarce time, but in-between discovered several not quite as good options? Besides, all along the way, Willow still contributes to the local economy! Not to rain on Willow's parade, as much as I love animals – because I love animals – a circus without them would have been better.

So far every reviewer has given Can't-Wait Willow a 5-star review, but I can't be that generous. My rating: storyline, 3 stars; illustrations, 5 stars.

my amazon review: visual beauty; okay story

another random 5

revkjarla hosts another random 5 today.


1. If I could hear what someone is thinking for a day, I might choose? because? I'll pass on this one… no interest whatsoever.

2. If I could be trapped in a tv show for a month, I'd choose Anne of Green Gables because I loved her prairie dresses, the slower than now pace of her daily life; I loved Anne's consideration of others and her constant kindness.

3. If I could do any job in the world for a day, I'd go back to the year I worked at a design studio in the CBD. My colleagues were fun, running out for a quick lunch amidst noisy downtown noonday chaos was a trip, a lot of our projects were challenging, with typically satisfying outcomes.

4. Right now I am loving the many many birdsongs I hear every spring day.

5. Use these words in a sentence? Here you go:
"As I sat at the computer, casually skipping through their website, feeling smug I'd made friendly Georgia my default serif font, suddenly … bless the Lord, O my soul! That's the cheeseburger from our vacation in Chihuahua. " Who took that pic? How did it get here?

Sabbath in the Suburbs

New book by MaryAnn McKibben Dana, Sabbath in the Suburbs: A Family's Experiment with Holy Time

You can find MaryAnn at The Blue Room Blog

Inspiring and practical! This truly is a book [xii] "...for anyone who wants to learn to live at a savoring pace." Inspired by a visit to Iona, PC(USA) pastor MaryAnn McKibben Dana spent twelve months from September 2010 through August 2011 (literally) practicing keeping a weekly sabbatical day with her spouse and their three kids. "Sabbath" means to stop, to cease work and worry; keeping sabbath means bringing life back into balance by living fully and simply in this present, gifted "now," if only for 24 hours, 12 hours, or another measured segment of chronological time.

Like MaryAnn, I'm also a city girl, accustomed to, often enamored with noisy (in every sense: high decibel, dissonant sounds; savory tastes, intense, colorful sights; interesting smells; varied natural and humanly-created texture) surroundings, uncomfortable with silence. Full of discomfort about being physically alone, by myself. I've also been spending a lot of time with memories of past achievements and experiences (some of that's essential in my current phase of discerning what's next in my life), as I imagine the venue and the shape of future activities and happenings (also necessary if that future's going to arrive). However, to counter that, I need the sense and the reality of [117] "Sabbath [which] is about ... delighting in the sacred ordinary that's always around us ... being grounded in relationships and in place," along with the work of Sabbath, "Play without Purpose" [139]. Sabbath is about living here and living now.

The author writes and lives from a Christian perspective, but almost anyone of any or no religious, theological, or spiritual persuasion could benefit from taking twelve months to practice keeping sabbath one day each week. I loved the easygoing, easily readable pace of the narrative as it moved month by month beginning with September, the traditional start of the academic year. Your starting point "new year" could be the first Sunday of Advent, January 1, Lunar New Year, or any ethnic, cultural new year. Or invent and announce your own. I'm planning to set my own date to begin and journal through twelve months of Sabbath in the City; I'll be posting a monthly blog, as well. MaryAnn has filled this book with useful examples from her own life, and brings dozens of relatable quotes from other writers, including Abraham Joshua Heschel, Henri Nouwen, and Wayne Muller.

As much as I enjoy reading and pondering heavyweight theology, I need books and conversations like Sabbath in the Suburbs that will help me (slowly learn to) live closer to creation, more authentically with others and with myself. Those of us familiar with the Hebrew scriptures know Genesis 2:2-3: "And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation." God calls us, and in the Spirit empowers us, to work as co-creators, co-re-creators of creation. But even more so, sabbath is for us because we no longer are slaves, no longer bound to labor and toil 24/7. Deuteronomy 5:15, "Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day."

Most of us attempt to "practice resurrection," to live "as if," "fake it till we make it." MaryAnn assures us [23-24] acting "as if" we've achieved the fullness and completeness of a full day of sabbath rest is not lying, not pretending, but rather it is "an act of hope."

my amazon review: inspiring and practical

Evolution's Purpose

Author Steve McIntosh's site; Evolution's Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins on amazon

As I began trying to read this book, I wondered why I opted for it from The Speakeasy; I generally can make my way around fairly dense theology, but this is more speculative and suggestive philosophy that may have taken more words than necessary to explain, but then again, possibly not. The author defines Integral Philosophy as "essentially a philosophy of evolution that emphasizes the evolution of consciousness as a central factor in the process of evolution overall; ... it demonstrates the connection between the personal development of each person's values and character and the larger development of human history." On xxix we read, "evolution is an [unrolling, as in a parchment scroll] overarching process of becoming, partly due to choices consciously made by creation itself (thus, evolution's - or the evolving creatures' - own "purpose") that shapes physical, cultural, conscious, social, and every imaginable aspect of life imaginable.

From that perspective of integral philosophy, the book discusses values, human agency, freedom of choice, beauty, truth, and goodness. Humanity, creation, nature... I wouldn't necessarily describe Evolution's Purpose as densely written, but it does seem to ramble on without much purposeful direction. The book is at least semi-scientific, and somewhat spiritual; to me it's also not very engaging. However, it might be more interesting and more accessible to someone trained in the physical and biological sciences than in theology.

"not exactly in my field of endeavor," my amazon review

April to May 5

For this April's last Friday 5, "April Showers Bring May..." Jan hosts and suggests, "With the old adage 'April showers bring May flowers,' let's look at the weather and vegetation in our home areas to see if any May Flowers will be blooming.

1. What spring flowers and plants do you see? Or will see sometime in the future?
Spectacular local spring specialties include the Carlsbad tulip fields and the Anza-Borrego desert in bloom.

2. What kinds of weather are you experiencing in April?
As much as I love hot weather in this coastal desert, that brings with it some interesting heat-dryness-humidity combinations, I've been enjoying our overcast, sometimes foggy mornings, frequently sunny afternoon, along with relatively cool rest of the days. "May Gray" and "June Gloom" probably will happen next, but occasionally neither does.

3. What are the stereotypical harbingers of spring in your area? How about where you grew up?
I love hearing the endless vireo songs! Just as during early spring everywhere, longer days, changing quality of ambient light, are pleasures, too. Spring means local tomatoes! We've been getting blackberries from Baja California since early December, but recently local strawberries have been showing up. Where I grew up, I particularly loved those occasional crocuses sprouting through melting corn snow slush, the surprise of warm sunshine, the sense spring truly was here, winter a fading dream.

4. What season do you like best in your home area?
All of them, but…summer wins the Blue Ribbon with its long, warm days, beckoning beaches, and overarching sweetness. I also like autumn, because that's when hot, dry, Santa Ana winds charged with positive ions that make some people crazy, give others (like me) a sense of intense well-being.

5. What is sprouting or blooming in your life? What do you wish for?
In my life I wish, long, hope for a real life again. Yesterday I enjoyed attending the vendor exhibit (please see pic, and I'm planning to blog about it soon) for our annual local Print Week. That gave me hope and inspiration, but I want and need so much more that only can be given as gifts of grace.

Juxtaposed

Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside on Amazon

Daisy Rain Martin's site... includes resources and hope for revealing and healing from abuse.

As we walk through this world – and as we engage scripture – we discover countless juxtapositions of seemingly polar opposites: sin and grace; evil and good; brokenness and redemption; oldness and newness. Daisy Rain Martin reminds us, "The universe is random. This is Earth where sad things happen. And God wastes none of it."

Daisy spent her earlier years "between the sanctified and the insane," ultimately becoming humanly whole in spite of the horrific direct sexual, emotional, and physical abuse she endured from her mother's husband, the silent and tacit abuse she suffered because of her mother's complacency. From cradle on, Martin lived in patriarchal, secretive, self-righteous, Pentecostal Christian setting that mightily contributed to her attempts to hide and to justify the abuse as it happened to her. The first part of her first-person narrative moves at breakneck speed through stories of her childhood, then onto her college years at what's now Vanguard University. It slows down some to offer long and closeup views of her life today with her son and husband; finally at the end of the book, Daisy describes the type of redemption her once-devastated life now offers the inner-city youth she teaches. "A Daisy Flower with a Rain of Hope" sets possibilities and alternatives before those kids, challenges them to grasp newness and a future in their hands. She exclaims about what hope can do for a kid, for any one!

I loved listening to her recount stories of the ultra-conservative, highly legalistic church experiences of her youth; learning about her and her husband's (in the end) negative times with a new church start that appeared to begin in a positive manner heartened me, too. As the author points out, people have survived and thrived beyond far worse than she has; comparison's typically are a bad idea, though placing yourself, your past, present, and possible future into the story is a big part of the value of a biographical book. As I read, I wondered how much of my own past I still needed to shed in order to testify as Daisy does, "I enjoy a life of abundance and hope and freedom beyond anything I could have ever thought or imagined because I have let go of my past. Literally. That includes people." That's a tough one: not only deciding to spend less time with a particular person, more time with people who are healthier influences, but zapping people completely out of your life? I feel that's what most of the people who were part of my former life did to me, yet despite my behaviors and attitudes never achieving perfection, I still cannot fathom how and why I was so not okay to them.

Despite the literal atrocities Daisy experienced, the biological heritage from her birth father definitely contributed to her ability to endure, as did her apparent ability to view goings-on with some detachment. I love her description of finally getting beyond denial, raging at God, and opening a path to start healing. Snippets of this story could be almost anyone's, and God wastes none of what happens to us―none of what we sometimes cause to happen to others, either.

I read the digital version of Juxtaposed, but we'd call this book a page-turner if it were analog. "Raw!" and "powerful!" are book review clichés, but Juxtaposed is those and more. I want to meet and talk with Daisy Rain; I'm waiting for her to come to a town near mine. Soon.

my amazon review: the history and the hope

Answering the Contemplative Call

Another wonderful discovery via The Speakeasy! Answering the Contemplative Call on Amazon

You also can find author Carl McColman on Facebook, and on his blog.

Answering the Contemplative Call is a primer, a guide for first encounters, a kind of Contemplative Practice 101 textbook, so it's not comprehensive. Like most introductory texts, the book covers a lot of territory, and attempts to define and describe a lot of concepts.

Basics:
Recognize the call
Prepare for the journey
Embark on the adventure .... of

"...the mystical path [which] is the path of love between you and God." (page 10)

Straightaway author Carl McColman cautions us how the lifelong practice the mystical journey, of engaging the mysteries of God, the mysteries of our lives, is more of a spiral than a straight line. The text of this book spirals around a lot, too, but that's part of what makes it engaging and fairly easy to read.

I won't attempt to list the many historical and more contemporary lovers of God the author cites, but they include Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Merton, Evelyn Underhill, Julian of Norwich, the desert fathers and mothers, English and Spanish mystics, Augustine of Hippo, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, C.S. Lewis. We can place ourselves in their company!



At the beginning, on page 6, McColman insists thinking about God or having spiritual thoughts is not the first step along the way. In fact, I never ever would have guessed or imagined his root concept―it is "beholding." He lines out the initial sequence again:
God calls us
The call makes us restless
we wake up (respond) to the call
we behold the mystery
"and only then―do we start thinking about it."

On page 38: "To behold implies a profound engagement with that which you see. It implies paying attention and truly being present. It implies not merely seeing, but holding―in your mind, in your heart, in your soul―that which you see. ...We have to be awake in order to behold. But we also have to be silent and present. It’s not something that a distracted heart or an anxious mind can easily embrace."

As everyone who has walked alongside Jesus of Nazareth for any length of days realizes that in some ways the journey is solitary, but you still need to find companions, people to break bread with along the way. (page 65) A Spiritual director? Maybe. But also reach out and serve others in various ways. Related to those other people we need, on pages 80-81, McColman reminds us, "social / external /activist" dimension of anyone's relationships with Jesus Christ is essential.

Essential for myself and also for most thoughtful, educated, activist, urban people in this 21^st century, the "Befriend Silence" chapter (page 89) begins by saying we need to make a home for silence in our hearts. Silencing that incessant inner noise, blocking out cacophony from streets and peeps. I love that he says on page 94, contemplative silence "gives us the space to find wonder..."

For sure I would like far more emphasis on scripture itself, but two-thirds of the way through we read, (page 117):

Christian meditation is not about letting images or thoughts go; rather, like other forms of kataphatic spirituality, it is all about immersing ourselves in the Word of God. "In the beginning was the Word," begins the Gospel of John. And ever since the apostles wrote the New Testament epistles and the evangelists wrote the Gospels, the Christian wisdom tradition has been associated with the mysteries of language. ... To use language is an essential part of being human, and so the exploration of Christian wisdom includes a strong focus on the words of the first Christian teachers, as well as of the great saints and mystics throughout history.

Finally, where does this twisty, turning, roundabout path of God's call to us, our awakening, beholding, and response to that call in contemplation lead? It's all about bringing heaven to earth, helping transform the world by being, demonstrating, and living the love of God. Answering the Contemplative Call is a smorgasbord of ideas and possibilities, one that could be an excellent gift for yourself, for a friend or an acquaintance.

my amazon review: God's Call

earth day 2013

from the deuteronomic historian we constantly hear the refrain, "into the land, into the land, into the land..." Deuteronomy 28:1-3 cautions and promises:

Now it shall be, if you diligently obey the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments which I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. All these blessings will come upon you and overtake you if you obey the LORD your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.

Easter Saturday

Today is the 8^th day of Easter 2013; This is another of my "life stuff" blogs, particularly the series I began during late Epiphany 2013.

Late, great, Preacher to the University at Boston University's Marsh Chapel Howard Thurman had essential advice for anyone trying to figure out what to do with their life—for the first time or two, or for the twentieth time or so: "Don't ask what the world needs, ask what brings you to life, because the world needs people who are fully alive." Another commonplace observes a person finds their calling – not always their career, job, or working life – where their gifts and passion intersect. At this age and stage, I'll add education and experience to the mix. I had every expectation I'd again have opps to engage world and church at levels related to my abilities. For a moment I'll discount the housing crash of September 2008 and the financial dominoes that tumbled in its wake, but anyone with my gifts, education, vision, ambition, (and hard work) could have expected to have a financial choice to attend symphony concerts, or jazz fests, a trip to Greece or the Pacific Rim every two or three years. This is not a hunter-gather society! Given how a shrinking, stuttering economy has caused everyone but the super-rich to cut back on everything, I'll add September 2008 and its aftermath back into the mix and say whatever the $$$ and employment markets, I still fully expected eventually to find a welcome place of embrace and participation. By 2006 or 2007 or so, I'd started to, and then it evaporated. At Good Friday lunch with the then interim pastor at North Minster, I told him Lent and Holy Week 2007 at North Minster and at North Park finally had shown me what might be possible. It's now six years later!

Over these years I've had watersheds galore. Besides major rejections, disappointments, and other "stuff" I maybe need to look at and through, I'm also reading the literal plethora of little things I'm not getting done as symptoms of too much that needs to change. "Not getting done" not because I've been so busy and involved in more important activities... In one of her early books, Kay Jamison mentioned aging so during a certain period of her life (exactly as I have over the past decade); she said it was inevitable, "with such loss of self, such distance from shelter, such proximity to death."

What brings me to life? What makes my heart sing? I enjoyed preparing notes and class handouts for Thursday bible studies at Church Around the Corner a couple months ago, but I truly loved interacting with the class. I felt like myself again; I was alive for that short time! Thinking of ways I can help make that happen again... I easily can make a simple list of ways I'd love interact with world and church again on a regular, ongoing basis.

In my blog and review of The Outermost House, I observed:

Walter Brueggemann insists much of life is sabbatarian, spent in the interstitial, liminal time between Good Friday afternoon and Easter Sunday dawn. During winter in a four-season climate like Cape Cod's, there is a simply being who we've become thus far that has a sense of Sabbath about it. We almost hang suspended in time waiting for gifts of birth, of spring, of new life to ready themselves.

I'm talking about moving to Los Angeles. But to where, and to what? And how?

On the eve of Easter 2 I'm still in winter's holding pattern, still suspended in time waiting for new life to spring forth.