It Works, but Not Immediately--and this is what so often keeps me from thoroughly enjoying poetry (and philosophy too, for that matter)

I am astonished this morning. I plan to respond more to James Sires book, How to Read Slowly, more later, but this morning I cannot hold back and wait to say this.

I read a poem this morning, a poem by Gerard Manly Hopkins this morning, and got it, at least a little bit, understood it in some sense. I read it twice last night, and it was nothing to me but a jumble of words and sounds, but this morning, even though I had forgotten all about it in the night, this morning it suddenly and unexpectedly made sense to me. I knew how to read it this time, even though I didn't know how to read it before.

Can I reprint it here, or must I satisfy myself with providing a link?

Hurrahing in Harvest

I don't do a lot of poetic analysis if I can help it, so I cannot tell you what I got from the poem, and don't really wish to, but what astounds me is that I read these words last night and didn't understand the rhythm of them, and when I read them again this morning, all of a sudden I did.

I want to understand and appreciate poetry, I really do, but I do tend to be like the tourist that Sire describes in his book, moving too quickly to really see what I am looking at. We do this in life too, you know.

And what I realize just now is that part of the Hopkins poem is the gazing, not any kind of sleazy voyeurism, but the taking time to see what's there. The Carolyn Weber book, Surprised by Oxford, is about this in some sense too.

I am one who wants to see. There is enough of the mystic in me for that. But I don't always see. I don't always see.

Read the poem, if you wish to, and if you don't understand it, read it again. And then read it again. And then don't read it for a while, and then read it again. This is one of the ways that poetry works. How easily I forget that.

Seasons...perhaps we anticipate a season of travel without quite realizing we are doing so...

This is a blog post, not a Facebook update. I realized it three sentences in. I don't always catch it.

I always said that Tuscaloosa was a nice place to live so long as you didn't have to stay here all the time. My family used to go away for whole summers at a time, and Daddy always took his sabbatical year in another place. I've been in Tuscaloosa far too long.

It's been what? Twenty years since I lived anywhere else? I had no idea it had been so long. I've never taken the time to tote it up before. The rest of the family spent a year in New York while I was in college, New York which is beautiful when the snow falls, but can also be bleak when the leaves are off the trees. They were at West Point. I visited them twice.

Since then it has been nothing but Tuscaloosa all the time, except for the occasional week-long excursion. A family took me with them to Gatlinburg once. Daddy took me with him to Mexico City on a trip with the Evangelicals to the Universidad there. We drove as a family cross-country to attend a campus ministry training seminar in Colorado once. We've been to Alabama's beaches more than once, and my husband's family lives in Huntsville.

But now I'm getting the traveling bug. He (my husband) prefers not to travel merely for the sake of traveling, but I begin to think we need the experience now of being forced to interact with unfamiliar people, unfamiliar cultures even within our own citizenship, though I lack the skill. I feel we need to scope out this country we live in, trying on new geography until we find the place that fits. But I'm not sure how we'd do it, and we'd miss our beds back home.

And with the University here, of course, the world comes to us.

But I hope perhaps this is a preparing. Maybe we are to be called away soon, and this longing to move (move freely, I mean, not necessarily in terms of a moving van-type move) comes on full-force so that we will be ready to answer the call. Maybe. Maybe we were tied here before in ways I could not perceive, but maybe change is coming and God is protecting me, preparing me for change. Maybe. Sometimes I think speculation is vain, and other times I think the speculation is the Holy Spirit sending messages to God's children. I couldn't tell you which this one is. It's certainly hard to distinguish between the two.

All I know is that all of this, this discomfort, this emerging need, must be building trust and faith. I think these past two years must be important, as hard as they've been, though others may say, "Aw, you've had it easy." Though sometimes I accuse God of torturing me, I also know anything He does is good, and for our good because He is Good.

This is where I metaphorically stand, watching the bamboo of my yard sway in the breeze.

I wonder if Christmas is about newness in a different way than the New Year is about newness, or Spring is about newness. I wonder.

The Problem with Memoir is...

You know what the problem with reading spiritual memoirs is, don't you? By the time you reach the end of the book you feel like you know the author, but you really don't. You can't pick up the phone and call them, say hey, I know we haven't talked in a while, but remember me? How's your week been?

Well, I suppose you could, maybe, but you'd probably come across as a lunatic.

And yet, I really do like the genre. I'm reminded of a quotation from Wayne Boothe that I used to use as the tag line under my email signature: "In life we never know anyone but ourselves by thoroughly reliable internal signs, and most of us achieve an all too partial view even of ourselves (The Rhetoric of Fiction, 3). Even though we know that the author has used their creative and selective vision to tie their personal story together, we still come away knowing something about them that we otherwise wouldn't discover from reading their profile off a fly leaf. I like knowing something about what another person, different from me, has experienced, mediated though it is, and must be.

My favorite memoirs:

• Most any nonfiction written by Madeleine L'Engle, as her writing style is largely memoir-esque, even outside of her published journals.
• Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner
• An American Childhood by Annie Dillard
• Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
• most recently, Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber

There's a whole world of memoir I have yet to discover. Name your favorites?

"The worst is my being alone...," Don Chaffer, album: "You were at the Time for Love"

I feel comfortable coming out of nowhere with an idea on Facebook, but somehow blogging seems so much more formal, as though anything published here ought to be finished and complete, properly set, and ended. Publishing here is different from publishing there, and it trips me.

So now for the set-up.

I'm reading this book my Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford. I saw it on the new releases shelf in the library at least half a year ago, and was drawn by the title, but didn't pick it up then. Later, through Goodreads perhaps, it emerged into my consciousness again, as the reviews led me to believe that despite my caution at approaching another spiritual memoir, one evoking my favorite author, no less, it would be a book worth reading.

It's a good book, but something about it scares me.

It isn't an alarming book, by any means, and it doesn't bring up any entirely new ideas that I have not considered before, but I am unsettled by it, unsettled being quite the appropriate word.

Is Oxford really like what she describes? Are there people in the world like what she describes, not just at Oxford?

I take back what I said about being unsettled by Weber's book. I was already unsettled before reading it.

And now I'm probably going to cry. Self-pity, you know. Or maybe you don't. Or maybe it isn't even self-pity.

What I came on here to say was this:

She makes me wonder if this part of the South, the part I live in, is a particularly uncomfortable place to be an introvert.

Among other, weightier things, and this is only a minor detail in a book about something else entirely, she mentions this man, this man who became so important in her life, his discomfort with small talk, and how he entered into deep conversation with her sister upon first meeting. It's like they recognized one another immediately.

For you this comes out of nowhere. For me it comes after many a conversation that has made me wonder about my geographical place in the world.

What scares me about this book is that Weber makes me want to escape to a place like Oxford, England. Not because it is a perfect place. No place is perfect. No people are perfect. There must be harshness and cruelty there just as there is here, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There must be apathy there, just as there is here. There really is no reason to think that I might be nurtured there anymore than I am here in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

What scares me about this book is that it makes me want to hope for something I must be completely naive to hope for. Of course the problem I have must be me and not my surroundings, right? Community is there for the joining, is it not? If I'm lacking in community, in intellectual nurturing here, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, it must be my own fault, right, because I haven't adapted properly, wanted it enough, etc. Because I'm too intimidated by those I must approach.

If I feel isolated it is because of me, not you. At least that's what I've believed for a long, long time. Or else not believed it, and therein lies the problem.

Does any of this make sense?

My internal dialog says, "Buck up, girl. Your geographical location has nothing to do with it. There's something wrong with you, not the topography." I don't trust that internal dialog, any more than I trust in some kind of utopian, pie-in-the-sky dream.

This is raw and exposed and it's the only way I know to write. Someday I hope to grow up out of it.

I think I need some British friends.

By the way, Carolyn Weber's book isn't about this, but it is making me think new thoughts.

Things I am Grateful for...

It hasn't been working, this whole blogging thing, and that's okay. Things I am happy about this morning:

• That my sister-in-law collects handkerchiefs, carries one, and gave me some to bring home with me.
• A fire in the firepit on a cold day; candles in the house.
• Shopping at Publix, where the staff is usually friendly, they give your children free cookies so that they want to shop with you, and the customer is not treated like an inconvenience. They don't shame you for using WIC either.
• The discovery that long nightgowns can be warm without also being frumpy.
• Using handmade soap in my bathroom.
• My friend Amy, who puts table cloths on her table at meal time everyday, to signal to her children that something important is happening.
• Changing the way I think about groceries.
• Books like chocolates, even the difficult ones.

A bit of Metablogging

You know, I keep getting these random trash messages in my email inbox--these "comments," so-called, on this one particular post, "A Little Metablogging to Jumpstart the Process." This is probably the first post I ever wrote, and I always naturally seem to circle back to this one idea. Blogging is hard. I want to blog. I see people all over the place who seem--emphasis on "seem"--to have no trouble generating a post a day. Some of them are simply prolific. Some of them, if you look closely, have worked up a nice production schedule, and aren't afraid to repost old material. I don't know. Is this supposed to be really hard, or really easy? Are these others simply more serious about what they are doing? Are they really just more disciplined than I am?

I actually know the answers to most of these questions. My friend, Jim, has been very generous in his advice to me on blogging. Damon is the same. My husband is supportive, because if I want to be a writer, he certainly wants me to write.

We've each of us had to put certain dreams of ours on hold for a variety of reasons. I have been encouraged recently that this is not an unusual scenario. It's natural that I have trouble writing when I have so many discrete jobs. It makes me sad that my musically talented husband has had to set the saxophone largely aside while he focuses on his other creative endeavors to feed the family.

Isn't it funny, how people told me years ago that we were in an intense period in our lives, and that we would be able to pick these things up again when our children were older, and I took no comfort in it? I was sleep deprived, and order deprived, and I just didn't believe them. Today I find the very same statement comforting--though, to tell you the truth, I am still sleep deprived, and order deprived.

I'm still working on that discipline thing. And on balancing expectations.

The One Thing I Lack; Or rather, the one thing I lacking seek of the moment

I picked up a book yesterday to consider whether or not it was a good time to start reading it. The book is Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. This was a book provided for us at the Classical Conversations Practicum several weeks ago. I started with the foreword, written by someone who saw fit to add his endorsement to a text he had reviewed, and read these words:

I was attracted immediately by the lucidity of his writing style and by the generosity of his mind.

I would very much like to know how I might obtain a generous mind, for I fear I do not possess one. Maybe if I read Climbing Parnassus someday, I may find out what the preface writer meant when he said that Tracy Lee Simmons has a generous mind .

An Incident. A filler? Good times with my son.

When my three year old woke up this morning, I was sitting in the living room reading a book, several of them, a pencil, and my coffee, piled up beside me. He came and nestled in next to me, then grabbed my Bible and started reading out the numbers of the chapters in Genesis. This time he recognized every one of the twenties, something we had gone over a week or two ago, but had not revisited since.

Amazing.

He had trouble once we entered the thirties, but in a little more than a week he has gained an entire section of numbers he didn't know before. The three-year-old mind is a fantastical thing.

And how do you like those sentence structures? I've been reading Stanley Fish, How to Read a Sentence. I suppose I've absorbed a little something in the past week myself, as difficult as that week had been. Whether they are good or not, or anything different from what I was accustomed to do already, I cannot tell.

Another Tune for Friday

My boys started watching Phineas and Ferb last night. They had seen it before at my sister's house. We had Phineas and Ferb gummies earlier in the week, so it was on their minds. They're watching an episode right now that reminds me of this song from The Jetson's, recorded by the Violent Femmes:



 And to think, we were at the table discussing our childhood cartoon viewing habits only yesterday.

A Sombre Song for a Gray Friday

I just learned something. I didn't realize before that I could share Levi Weaver's music directly from his website. So that's pretty cool. I don't have to go through grooveshark anymore, at least not when it comes to Levi.



It's just that kind of day today. I kinda want to hide away, but I can't. There are things to do, people to see. Old saw. Yesterday I got really stressed for a time and did some wallowing. Today I'll probably do some hiding. Tomorrow will be a better day.

Having to Work When I'd Rather Be Reading

I've had a hard time keeping up with the household this week. Laundry, the one thing I think I'm really good about, has piled up. Letting the laundry get behind adds up to too many loads to fold on the same day. Often this means that one load gets left in the dryer to wrinkle for a day or two. We don't even generate that much laundry at this point. I don't know how you ladies manage who have to do three loads every day. Hopefully you've figured out how to get your kids to help. I haven't managed that one yet.

Okay, so here's my thing for today: I've told you how I'm supposed to have a few hours free in the mornings to get some work done, that's reading, studying, writing, bookkeeping, editing, etc. I'm glad to have it. But it turns out that I can't use that time any old way I want.

For some reason, if I don't start in on the housework during my "study time," what my five year old refers to as my "quiet play time," the day probably ain't going to go very well. Somehow I have to jumpstart the dishes and the laundry before 9:00 a.m if anything at all is to be accomplished house-wise that day.

It's annoying. In fact I'm feeling rather irritable about it. But it must be done.

The good news is it's library day, and the reference desk has a book I've requested through Interlibrary loan. And it's a short one.

And this morning, even though I am irritable, I have managed to start the day off right, so there.

Reading: Sometimes I Think It Must Be Done Even When It Proves Frustrating

I'm unprepared to do a lot of writing today, but I have already done a good bit of talking this morning. I don't want to mention names of books or names of authors, so I'll designate one author A, and the other author B.

I was reading a book this morning, one that I have been wrestling with, and I was just beginning to settle in, thinking that the author's analysis was incomplete, but tolerable, when author A hit me with something that really set me off. I repressed the urge to fling the book across the room, and instead took the problem to my kind and brilliant husband. I'm not being sarcastic here; He really is both kind and brilliant.

I read it to him, we discussed it, and I was able to calm down just a bit.

Here's something we noticed: your response to a particular book is often a result of the expectation you bring to your reading of it.

My husband posited that if I reacted so strongly to author A, shouldn't I have responded with equal vehemence to author B.

"No, and here's the difference...." I realized it as I explained.

When I read the book by author B, I went in knowing that I was unlikely to agree with his position. I expected some insight, which he did in fact display, but my trust was never violated by author B because I hadn't invested a significant amount of trust in him in the first place.

Not so with author A. I went into author A's book expecting an agreeable reading experience. I didn't expect to agree with everything she said, but I did expect to find arguments and ideas that I could appreciate. Almost immediately my trust was violated.

Was it violated violently? No. It's just that there seemed to be a certain element missing from her assertions beginning on page one. I'm still not entirely sure what it is that is missing, I just know that I don't trust this person. I still expect her to somehow be able turn it around on me, to redeem this reading experience, but as I said, every time I start to think, hey, this is getting better, she implies something that blows up the entire thing.

Ursula LeGuin in fact first alerted me to this idea of an author violating the reader's trust. It makes sense to me. When you know what to expect from an author and you get that very thing, even if it is a problematic thing, it is acceptable. In fact there are some authors who I find to be a lot of fun to argue with. Though it is perhaps a one-sided exchange, it is a rewarding one. There are others who I don't enjoy arguing with at all. Neither do I enjoy reading them, and author A, it seems, is falling into that category.

I haven't made up my mind about author A. I'm still willing to wait and see if things will change. Maybe I'll find her analysis better on some issues than on others. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. We all have our peculiar emphases and blind spots.

But now I've gotten to a part of author A's book I don't even understand. When Michael becomes available again, we'll talk through it and he'll be able to help me understand.

Unfortunately, based on my analysis above, I may be setting myself up for more frustration, that is, by continuing to hope for an improved reading experience, but it's a chance I'll have to take.

There isn't a lot you can learn by refusing to engage ideas that challenge your thinking.

Thoughts on Teaching My Child to find Shizuoka on a Map

I'm thinking about my children's education a lot these days, trying to learn all I can about learning and teaching, trying to figure out what's what and how to do this Home Education thing. As much as I resisted the idea in the past, I'm starting to see that teaching my boys might be kinda fun, and is totally appropriate for us considering we, my husband and I, are life-long learners ourselves.

Me, I'm curious about just about every subject, from particle physics to spelling, which isn't to say that I understand anything about particle physics, or expect my five year old son to.

We'll be able to model for them how and why to learn. We'll be able to provide ample rime for review so that new information can move easily from short-term memory into long term memory, etc.

Anyway, I was thinking the other night about geography. I bought this awesome DK World Atlas at the Classical Conversations Parent Practicum last week. I fell in love with this thing the very first day of the practicum and I couldn't pass it up. I'd show you a picture of the book, only I don't know how.

The CC people believe a knowledge of geography is important because it makes you more alert to things that are going on in the world. You'll hear the name of a small city in Japan, and think, hey, I know something about that place; I wonder what is going on there. You'll be more alert to the interests and concerns of people you'll never meet. In my own experience, it makes me happy that my five year old son can look at a map of the world, point to Japan, and say, "hey, my uncle David lives there."

This was my brain wave the other night.

What if Parker and I look at a map and I ask him to find Brazil for me. And then Estonia. And then Nepal. Or what if we start out even more simply. We look at a labeled map and I ask him to point to Australia, or Oceania, or whatever it is we're calling that particular continent these day. (The name of the continent has changed recently, or hadn't you heard? I only know about the change by chance.) And then we look for Europe and Asia and Antarctica and all of the seven continents and four oceans. He learned the names of the continents and oceans at VBS last year, so this isn't entirely new information for him. What if we do that regularly over an extended period of time? After a while, he will no longer need to look at the words on the map in order to find the continents or oceans. He'll have memorized their location on the map. And we'll find a map that has a different perspective from time to time, and then he'll see that the locational relationship between the continents stays the same even when their place on the map doesn't. In this way he will no longer be tied to using only one map, but will be able to find Asia on any map.

It all seems so natural, and in the process he and I will learn together what I had already forgotten. I remember memorizing maps in elementary school, but I don't remember what was on them. When someone mentioned North Carolina the other day I realized that even though I know it has a coast, and that it is to the North of the state I live in, which is Alabama, all this time I had been thinking that it was West of us. My mental U.S. map had us traveling through Georgia on the right instead of on the left.

The Last Load of Laundry that Broke the Camel's Back

I had one of those moments Friday night.

It had been a long week. I was behind on almost every aspect of family and household care. There was a week's worth of laundry, dishes to be washed, etc.

You know the song. I've shared it with you before: "He Will Come," recorded by Waterdeep.



"She can handle any tragedy that happens but not little things like this."

I was on the last load of laundry, having congratulated myself on removing three chocolate bars from my son's pants before starting the dryer cycle, as well as the fact that they were still in their wrappers and the clothing remained unstreaked. It was already late by the way that I measure time. Back to the kitchen for more dish washing. Yeah.

And I was so tired.

But what do you know, I didn't get all of the chocolate bars out of my son's pants after all. There was one more. It came out of the dryer, after two dryer cycles, in a ball, having left small chocolate streaks on the clothes and on the walls of the dryer.

I thought the entire load was ruined. You knew that heat tends to set-in stains, didn't you?

I put the load through the washing machine again thinking that every item of clothing in that load had been ruined, and I was devastated. Believe me when I tell you I was devastated over a single load of laundry.

When our car was totaled two years ago, right before our anniversary, I was fine. When my husband lost his job a few weeks later and decided to pursue his own project rather than interview for a new one, I was fine. Two years later, in the present, while still waiting for our income to start covering our expenses, I'm not exactly fine, but I am trusting God to keep us going debt-free as He has all this time. But the laundry? That was it.

You'll tell me that I didn't really come through all those bigger things without paying a high price, and you're right. But when I tell you I was fine, I tell you the truth. The big things, I can trust God for. The little things make me want to quit.

And that's what I was thinking while the laundry ran a second time that night. I'm done. I cannot be in charge of the housework. I cannot do it, Lord. You have given me a job I cannot do.

You have let me down.

We have that kind of relationship, God and I do. I yell at Him sometimes. He lets me rant and rave, and still He knows my heart, and I figure better that I yell at Him than yell at my husband, because He is big and strong, He knows me, and He knows the truth, and honey, He can take it. Besides, He knows exactly what I'm thinking whether I tell Him or not.

The Bible tells me that this is right. David did it. So did Job. And God answered both of them.

I hope you don't think I say this flippantly; it is a serious matter.

And after I've ranted and raved against Him for a while, this is what He says to me.

God says, "Baby, I'm here with you, and you can trust Me." Not in those words, of course. There are no floating voices, as my friend Damon sometimes reminds me. Maybe sometimes God does speak in an audible voice, but never to me.

And you know what? Even if the situation hadn't ultimately worked out it would have been okay. I scrubbed down the inside of the dryer with an SOS pad. I used stain stick on most of the clothes, and when I washed them that second time they came out clean.

And, hey, I got a blog post out of it.

My Week in Review: A Thought-scape

I can hardly believe the extent to which this Practicum deal-eo has worn me out. It was three days in Gardendale, which meant just over an hour's drive each way over the course of three days, and last night after sticking my children in their beds, I was done. This morning I still feel the effects.

So what happened this week?

I spent a lot of money. I drove through heavy rains such that all I could see in front of me was the next car, and the white lines rushing past between us. I learned from the lady sitting behind me in lecture that the best way to teach my three year old beginning reading might be to spend ten to fifteen minutes with him on starfall.com every day. I did this with Parker without intentionality. Isaac has not gotten similar treatment.

I have no expectation of Isaac being an early reader, but right now he seems interested, and we certainly need some little something to do together on a regular basis. I firmly believe that children learn to read at their own pace. Some will latch onto in early; others will drift into it late, and that is okay.

The point is that I don't know about Isaac whether he will learn to read the same way Parker did or not. He may. He may not. This is an opportunity to learn something more about my child, if I can somehow pay attention. What may I learn about each of my children today?

On Wednesday afternoon someone said to always examine your expectations with your children. There are certain things they need to accomplish in the course of the school year. We mean for them to master a few particular skills, and we shouldn't be in a rush to move on to the next things before they master them.

You know this is an issue in my own life. I'm always, and I mean always, in such a hurry to move on to the next book that I often rush through the one I am reading right now. It's as though time were the enemy, and not a good gift from our good God. I'm reading Eugene Peterson right now, who is teaching me at present that time is part of God's good creation.

And I have rambled, but you see the inter-connectivity here. This is one of the things this Classical Conversations curriculum emphasizes, and one of the things I like about it. It is a true description of reality that we have been trained to miss. Math and science are not only related to each other, they are related to literature as well. The book I am reading this morning isn't an isolated work; it is related to a conversation that has been going on since creation. Not only that, but I find that two books I am reading right now, chosen independently, are about the exact same set of ideas discussed in very different ways. One reinforces the other even if only by contrast.

Um, I guess I'd better stop now.

Exposure and Overexposure in the Realm of Ideas

It's Wednesday night. I am so tired. New thought for the day: according to this classical model of education the idea seems to be that three exposures to new material makes it graspable. So does that mean that I should read every book three times? Because one of my great struggles with reading remains: I read a book, I love a book, but a month later I may not be able to tell you what the book was about. I also have a difficult time summarizing content for the sake of discussion, which is a major disadvantage when you want to get a third person's input.

Michael suggests that I should simply take good notes on first reading. He has a point.

I have this notebook I started using for note-taking a while back. I used it for a good while with a certain success. These pages, they were filled from margin to margin with thoughts, extrapolations, quotations. I stopped doing that after a while, but the time has probably come to resume  it.

I'm reading a book right now, a book that frustrates me. I'm not certain the author has engaged her ideas with enough depth. Michael says to me, maybe you need to examine these ideas, do your own research, develop an outline based on this other author's work, and use it as the basis for your own book. Address the problem directly. It's a good idea. Welcome to the rest of my life.

I don't know. Can I develop the mental discipline to do such a thing?

That Old Joke About Making Assumptions--the Clean Version

We went out of town this past weekend. So early Saturday morning I'm in the kitchen washing dishes and I suddenly realize that I forgot to ask my husband whether his parents knew when we were coming. I assumed that when he communicated to me that we were going, he had communicated it to them as well.

An assumption. They tell you never to make them.

Only, usually when you make an assumption, you don't actually think it through. Assumptions go unexamined almost by definition, don't they? It's only after the fact that you realize an assumption has been made, and even then only if your assumption has been proven false.

As it turns out this time he did remember to tell them. True story.

On Levi Weaver and Supporting the Music

Levi Weaver. He came to town last year and played a house show at my friends house right around the corner from me. This was the second live show I had attended in a matter of weeks, after many, many years of a current music-less existence. And this from the girl who used to have a CD going in her room ALL THE TIME.

It was good. He was able to do a lot of sound manipulation right there in my friend's living room, which was cool. He writes his own stuff, which is also cool. Other than a few tracks on grooveshark.com, this was my first exposure to his music.

In some ways I am cautious about devoting myself to new music. Once upon a time my brother made the mistake of saying that I had good taste in music, that I managed to find the good stuff in a sea of mediocrity. It was a mistake because since then I have become paranoid about my own musical taste. Is this one good enough for me to say I like it?

I think so. I like it. I really do. Levi offers his music for free from time to time, so I have gradually been able to access most of it, even with my seriously miniscule music budget. I haven't been able to support his career the way I would prefer to. Levi has a family to provide for, and I affirm that musicians need to be supported for their work as much as any other skilled and talented traditionally employed person does. Otherwise, how can they possibly continue to produce it? And I want so badly for the music to be made.

One of the things I like about Levi is the fact that he is transparent about what he does. Not long ago he was involved in an IndieGoGo campaign for a movie project that would document his life on the road and directly address the difference between success and fame. He spent time on his blog talking about exactly how any money that was raised would be used, which I thought was cool, because I had a lot of questions in that regard.  Preeminent among those was, How are you going to make this work?

Well, I was very happy last week to find that Levi Weaver has addressed some of my questions in two blog posts he has written from the road. The first one, "On David Lowery and Stealing Music," addresses ethical reasons why stealing music is wrong. I freely admit to you my ignorance. I don't know who David Lowery is. I also don't understand how anyone can argue that stealing music does not harm to those producing the music, particularly those who are doing it independently. The Chaffers used to put these clever notices on their CDs, such as "This is an independent record. Unauthorized duplication of this recording means we have trouble putting food on the table, and is also against the law." (don chaffer + waterdeep, 'whole 'nother deal')

He then balances this post with another one that arrived in my reader last week, "Part Two: Why I Believe in Free Music." I'll tell you the truth, this other side of the issue really encouraged me when I read it yesterday. I've wondered how the whole giving-away-your-stuff-freely deal ever translates into revenue. Yes, I am currently emotionally invested in Levi Weaver's success, but I have no money. I am emotionally invested in my friend, John Kelley's success as an artist, but I have no money. Same is true for Greenhorn Gardening. I try to promote these guys as often as I can, but I have only limited access to their intended audience.

And of course I am emotionally invested in the success of Dog Fight: Starship Editon. This is the product that will or will not land food on my own table.

So (I suggest you) read Levi's blog posts. While you're on his website, listen to the music. You can stream it easily and immediately. It's good stuff.

Why Is It So Hard to Really Say What We Mean?

It's difficult in two senses, and I expect these will come up again in a later post, but for now I'll tell you that one of those senses involves a certain fear-factor.

So, guys, I just wrote something that was a little heated, and probably controversial, and I'm not sure I'm ready to expose it to the vast world of the internet just yet. Sometimes the internet really depresses me, because while there are a lot of things that are great about it, it is certainly not a safe and friendly place. My husband would tell me, "If you don't want to get into a fight, then don't publish." The thing is, if you aren't prepared to get into a fight, can you really ever afford to publish anything?

You ask your innocent question on Facebook, and then are shocked when your so-called "friends" don't react as warmly as (or maybe even react more warmly than) you anticipated. I've seen ugly responses to blog posts and YouTube videos. Am I prepared to receive them? Honey, when you tell the truth you have to be prepared. And to tell you the absolute truth, I am not so prepared.

Do I want people to read my blog or don't I? You know guys, sometimes I really don't know the answer to that. What was I writing about this morning? Um, postmodernism. You read that correctly and now I'm embarrassed. Surely postmodernism is safely theoretical? Well no, actually it isn't. It creeps into everything we think and say and do. As does it's predecessor, modernism.

Is this a spiritual issue? Why, yes to that one too. It most certainly is.

So let me just quickly tell you the name of my favorite book on the subject, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K.A. Smith. I've recently discovered through other written contexts that I don't necessarily follow Smith's political reasoning, but I love his Christian analysis of postmodernism. Smith is a man who doesn't separate his faith from his study of philosophy, and I believe he manages very well to integrate the two. It's worth reading. I think that Smith demystifies the theory, boils it down to its most basic assumptions, and shows very clearly that at its root postmodernism is not antagonistic to a holistic Christian worldview. In fact, it can be mobilized in favor of kerygmatic theology, as Smith might say. Don't let that big Greek-derived word scare you. It simply refers to the gospel that is preached.

Read it. It's a good book, and much more easily accessible than trying to read Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault directly.

Wrapping Up a Pretty Decent Week of Writing

I'll save my more intensive blog postings for during the week. Since all of a sudden I've started writing again, and who knows how long it will last, I feel the need to pace myself, and not throw it all at you in one swoop before it disappears. Maybe it (this ability to write) will disappear and maybe it won't. I make no promises.

Highlights of my week:

• Writing again. Suddenly I'm feeling sort of creative, and this is a good feeling.
• Time with friends. We've had a rather social week this week in the Fox household. This is good for me. I even managed to give the toilet a good scrubbing in anticipation of having guests in my home. My children got to have fun with friends too this week.
• I found some more good books that I am now dying to read.
• I think I am in the midst of learning something about putting people ahead of all those practical considerations that are not necessarily life-affirming. 
• I acquired some new houseplants unexpectedly this week. I have hope that I will water them on a regular basis and not half killed them as I have some of my other houseplants.
• I read a good, though sometimes a little threatening, and not wholly unproblematic book called The Feminine Soul, by Janet Davis. In fact, I think that combination often makes for a very good book.

Lowlights?

• I've experienced some discouragement and anxiety this week. What I told Michael earlier is that I feel I am supposed to be operating out of grace and wisdom, but instead I have been operating out of discouragement, and a perceived inability to cope with normal daily life. I tend to feel kind of small and overwhelmed. I don't like being accused of being a perfectionist. I'm not. I want balance. I don't want to be good at everything. I want to be good at a few things. I don't want to run my house like a machine. I want to run it like a refuge. 
• Um, all the baby stuff came back from the friend who had borrowed it, and I had just started to make some progress in weeding unused items out of some of the nooks and crannies of our small house. I haven't been able to figure out what to do with those items yet.
• We spent some money I didn't want to, and did spend some money that I didn't. Often these choices are the right ones, but they still cost me something in terms of a certain mental dissonance.
• The coffee beans I've been grinding are past their prime, but I'm not in a position to throw them away and open a new, unexpired bag just yet. I hope that by the time I do, my other stock will not have already expired. We're coming up on August more quickly than expected.

Yesterday I told my husband, "I need a frozen yogurt, a beer, and a good cup of coffee. Do you have any of those things hidden away in your office somewhere?" I'm afraid for a moment he may have thought I was serious. I really did want those things, but I didn't actually expect him to supply them.

You know what, it kind of helps me to write all this out. So that's cool. Have a good weekend!

Keeping Commitments

I was reading Stephen Covey's classic personal management text, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, a while back. I got a few chapters in, but then had to put the book on hold, as evidenced by the fact that it has sat on my reading shelf for three or four months now (see Goodreads sidebar). Let it be known, I am not currently reading this book, not studying it or anything, but I think it is a very good book, and I will get back to it eventually. Even soon, maybe.

One of the excellent points that Covey makes is that we need to become people who are able to keep our commitments. I know that this is easier for some than it is for others. I find a great desire in myself to make commitments and to keep them, but I still often fall down on the job. Covey says the place to start is with making commitments to yourself. Practice them over an extended period. His is a how-to book after all.

So I had this great idea. I wrote myself up a personal commitments list and posted it right next to my desk. And earlier, last month maybe, I promised to share my list with you. So here goes:

Note: This is a longer list than is perhaps advisable for starters. A friend of ours read the Scripture out in small group one night, and it stuck with me.

Kelly's Commitments (A Checklist)

Behold, I go forward, but He is not there,

And backward, but I cannot perceive Him;

When He acts on the left, I cannot behold Him;

He turns on the right, I cannot see Him.

But He knows the way I take;

When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

Job 23:8-10

• Review calendar and commitments checklist every morning to make sure I don't forget anything that's been scheduled.
• Track temperatures daily for NFP. (I have a chart I track this in.)
• Get up early every morning. Start the day off right by not sleeping through the best part of it.
• Shower at night to facilitate the morning's activities.
• Walk (or pursue some other form of exercise).
• Use leg-extensions as a warm-up before walking (or any other exertion, for that matter).
• Drink plenty of water.
• Read and/or study the Bible.
• Memorize entire book of James.
• Take Vitamins (including multi-vitamin, Ginko Biloba, and B-Complex). (Vitamins are on hold at the moment. Seemed like they were causing some problems.)
• Remember that sugar tastes good, but makes you feel bad. Avoid eating or drinking anything sugary until late in the day.
• Wear makeup and jewelry most days.
• Put clothes and jewelry away at night instead of leaving them out until morning. This includes hair ties.
• Remember that drinking too much alcohol at night makes it difficult to get up early in the morning.
• Actively pursue friendships and take responsibility for maintaining them. Don't rely on Facebook to do this for you.
• Leave kitchen counter, dining room table, and coffee table in the condition you wish to find them in the morning (i.e., reasonably clear and clean).
• Be quick to discipline the children before getting angry with them. By the time I am angry it is already too late to teach them anything good or true. Remember that anger produces fear, not obedience; anger produces rebellion, not steadfastness. Correction is not about retribution or revenge; it is about love. The children must be trained to obey us now, so that they will know how to obey God later.
• Keep up with the book keeping and prepare a quarterly profit/loss statement in April, July, October, and January. Do this so that tax time will be easier next year, and so that we will be better informed in order to make decisions about spending. 
  
  Some of these had fallen by the wayside recently, which is why I include that bit about reviewing the calendar and commitments daily. Actually, this morning I'd forgotten it was time to do a quarterly statement, so this little exercise in posting and revision has helped me in that regard as well.
  
  I think an important thing to remember about a set of commitments like this one is that these are fluid, and at times may require further revision. These are things I plan to do to make my life better, to make things run more smoothly, and to free up head space for other pursuits, and they will not be appropriate for every season in my life. I also believe on principle that it is wrong to enslave oneself to one's list. I've said before on Facebook, and will probably say again and again, that a to-do list, which is all this commitments list really is, is a tool that frees you. Preserve your adaptability. And drink your water.

I Suppose This Needs A Title: Happy Independence Day; Let Us Think About History for a Moment

I'm not much of one to write anything special for the holidays. In fact, the very thought causes me to freeze up. I thought about posting a regular old personal post this morning, but it didn't quite seem appropriate.

Instead, in honor of the Classical Conversations Practicum I shall be attending next week, I offer you this assignment from Leigh Bortins. I thought it was a perfectly lovely idea, because I'm a grammar nerd. I also don't mind telling you that I don't actually remember how to diagram a sentence. I appreciate the teaching link she provided, and I hope to check it out, if I can ever get all my work done. Everything seems to be piling up in the month of July.

Declare and Diagram: the first line of The Declaration of Independence. Reading just that first line makes me want to grab up one of our many copies of The Federalist Papers and set to reading. Yes, the language can sometimes be a little tricky to untangle in the 21st century, but it is rich and beautiful, and begs to be read aloud.

Psst: These are both the same link, so you don't have to click on both of them. You've been warned.

Adventures in Bread Making: The First Major Mind-Slip

I remember reading where Jill Cooper (www.livingonadime.com) said if you make a pie crust every day for a month, you'll become an expert crust maker because you'll make every mistake it is possible to make. I've been making bread daily for about three weeks now using an automatic bread machine, and for the first time this morning I neglected to put the dough hook back in the machine before adding my ingredients. The machine had been sitting for forty minutes before I realized, from another room, that the hook was missing. I then compounded the error by turning the machine off before dumping all of the sodden ingredients into a ceramic bowl. If I had taken the time to look at the machine first I would have seen that there was a pausing option.

Maybe it will turn out okay. The thing that worries me is that I am using a wheat bread recipe, and the wheat cycle just sits there for the first half hour of running, and then it combo mixes and bakes for another four hours (!). Is my yeast, now untimely mixed with warm water, going to go crazy before the mixing cycle begins? I don't know what that half hour of sitting is for, or why the bread rises so much the first time before being pounded down by the second kneading cycle. Some reading on the matter is required. It would be good to know these things, and perhaps one of you can explain them to me, even if only for the sake of my children knowing something about food that may come in handy some day.

Idioms are fun

My husband brought this one up last week, and I believe I have related it before:

I once worked in a lighting store. I had the most fun there either finding the needed parts for the electricians who came in every day or helping the stylish consumer find just the right lampshade for a lamp they already owned. As far as lampshades went, it was fun to find just the right size, shape, and proportion to suit the lines of a shapely lamp.

We had shelves devoted to lampshades, and there was one particular shade that had been there for some time. It had a small card attached to it that proclaimed the shade to be "One of a kind." I took a liking to that lampshade and told my husband, "You know that's code don't you? It means, 'This is one ugly lampshade.'"

I bought it. It looked terrific on a lamp we had inherited from my father-in-law's college days.

But the curious thing about that little card was curious only to me. This, too, I explained to Michael later.

"You know what 'one of a kind' actually means? Think about it. Re-imagined literally wouldn't 'one of a kind' mean that the item so marked is merely one of a particular kind? So basically what they are saying is, 'Hey, look: This is a lampshade!'"

Idioms are fun.

A Reading Ramble and Reigning it In

Is it possible for me to slow it all down, to read fewer books, to sink right into them? I don't know if it is possible. I find that I am very impatient. I find that it isn't enough for me to be actively reading five different books at one time. There's always the urge to add in just one more.

Yesterday I wanted to read Kierkegaard. Why? Because someone somewhere said something that sounded something like something that he once wrote, and that made me hunger for Kierkegaard.

The day before I was reminded of all these people I wanted to study: Chesterton, McDonald, Lewis. If you know much about C.S. Lewis you get the idea. All these guys wrote all these books and they are deep. Why reminded? Because I read Walter Hooper's introduction to Lewis's published poems. Hooper writes that many of Lewis's prose works began their life in verse, and I went "Whoah. There is so much of this man I still don't know." He wasn't a great poet, at least that's what I've been told, but he had a passion for narrative poetry I knew nothing about. That got me thinking of all these men whose writings I dearly want to know.

There's always a flood of books to read; I've written of this before, but it remains, there is always a flood, and time is short and attentions are divided, and this is why I cannot settle down into reading only one book at a time.

But then this morning I read an interview WC Banfield did with Bobby McFerrin at the end of McFerrin's year and a half sabbatical. It was a true sabbatical for him, a year and a half away from the work and the worry and the world, and he said he needed to sit and think and hear. He said he needed to figure out why he was doing what he was doing, whether he was being nourished by his work or being merely drained by it. I think this is something for us all to consider, though even the most nourishing work cannot be consistently nourishing.

Last month I read Richard Foster's latest book on meditative prayer. In one chapter he spoke of the difficulty of presence. I know that when I sit quietly my thoughts are always going somewhere very far away. It may be plans or questions or analyses, those strivings to make sense of your own life, and these are so distracting. These many multitudinous thoughts are a distraction. Sometimes you need to sit and be, and this is such a challenge for us. Sometimes when we are sitting quietly we want so desperately for God to speak that we interrupt Him and interrupt ourselves. We guess at what He might be saying so that it becomes impossible to hear.

God sends me books, and I am constantly amazed at the interconnectedness I find among them. Books are good. They can be very good. But they run riot in my life, and can verge on becoming interruption instead of life imparting force. Actually, I kinda like the interruption.

Last year I wondered what would happen if I chose one book and really drank it in, reading it and it alone in all those available moments. I thought it would be Annie Dillard's The Living, and it's true that it would be a very good one to read in such a way. Since then I've probably read fifty books, so you can see how well that worked.

We wake up in the morning and we try it again, don't we? For me, cutting back on the number of books I read at one time would be a great discipline. To start a new book is an impulse, and one I only rarely deny. It is mostly a good impulse. Mostly.

Voice as Agency?

Every time I say I can't write right now, I feel like I'm whining, complaining...poor little me, I can't write. Maybe that's because I say it so often. Truth is, the ability to write comes and goes. I'll be "on" for a while...a whole month at a time, maybe. Sometimes even longer than that. And then the tap is turned, and even though there are thoughts, complaints, observations, clarities raging, there is no writing that can accommodate them. It isn't the thought that is lost. It is the voice. The thought is there, but the voice becomes choked into silence, and usually that silence comes because internal factors are in play. I think I've written here before about the idea that sickness sometimes indicates other, more secretive stresses, stresses you've kept hidden even from yourself. Maybe you get sick because you haven't been feeding your body properly, with rest and nourishment and exercise. Maybe you're sick because you're in conflict with your spouse and neither of you will unbend enough to retrieve your love and care for one another from the theoretical mist. Maybe you are sick because you want something specific from God that isn't as ultimately sustaining as what he has planned for you. I think my loss of voice is something similar to this. Or maybe I'm just tired. But I hope to retrieve my voice and soon.

My Writing Process

John Kelley asked me about my writing process this morning. My answer was that, um, I don't have one. Jim would tell me that I really ought to do something about that.

In the past I have had an idea, sat down, and written it, usually at 7:00 in the morning. The words just came more easily then. For a while I gave myself an hour every morning just to write. It was nice, but it never really progressed past process writing. None of that writing was ever published.

For a while I did some very intense note-taking, including a quantity of very careful Bible study. This generated a lot of writing as I riffed on things I was thinking in response to the text. None of that writing was ever published. Recently I have begun writing a comment, a blog post, anything really, over and over and over again, but nothing has come. Most of the time I've been stymied after about two sentences.

I surely would like to do some triage, figure out what the problem might be. I went on and on to my Dad the other day while we are at the pool, all of it concerning things I could be blogging about.

It still ain't happening.

Talk about being "long on diagnosis; short on cure." Except without the diagnosis part.

Morning Musings

Good morning, ya'll.  I'm waiting for the sun to come out this morning, so I can see what part of my yard lights up. My plan, conceived only moments ago, was to pay attention to the yard all day so I can figure out where the garden needs to go. You see, I only start thinking about the garden at the most awkward times of year. I begin to believe that if I wait to dig my garden until the proper moment, that moment will come and go with nothing having been done. I have to make what progress I can when I can. And learn from the results. I don't for one moment think that this approach would work for everyone.

Anyway, I've been watching and waiting since 5:30 this morning, and still the lite-brite patches of grass have not appeared, and I think, God, I'm ready today. So where's the light? Sometimes His only answer to a question like that is, "I love you." I don't know what He has planned for me today, but He does, so I'm just going to have to be okay with that.

My walking partner is soon to arrive.

Michael found an injured cat outside our home last night. We wait for its owner to open her door so we can together figure out what to do next.

God only knows what this day will hold.

The Never-Ending Quest for Routines That Work

The older I get, it seems, the more dependent on routines I become, and the longer it takes for me to recover when the routine becomes disrupted. In fact, I have a great deal of trouble settling into any kind of routine in the first place. Gotta do something about that.

There are responsibilities emerging in the coming year which will make routines more important than ever. The best thing I can do to prepare is to start working out my routines with determination, trying to build up that consistency of which I feel an ever-growing need. And yet I have to cultivate flexibility as well. There will always be distractions and disruptions. Always.

This week we had to leave town in the middle of the week. Two full days after arriving home, I feel un-ruddered. Just exactly how long is this routine-making going to take?

How about you? What kind of schedules or routines have you found to be most effective?

It is a Releif to be able to Mark Another Book on my Bookshelf Off as Read

I am writing on Saturday, and my goal for today is to finish reading Self-Employed Tax Solutions: Quick, Simple, Money-Saving, Audit-Proof Tax and Recordkeeping Basics for the Independent Professional, by June Walker. Do you know why I want to finish it? Mainly to get it off of my Reading Now list, as tracked by GoodReads.com. Do you think that is a silly reason for wanting to finish a book?

No, really, the book has been hanging around on my bookshelf for far too long this year already. This is my second read-through. When Michael was first dismissed from his job a year and a half ago, I borrowed a copy from our friend, Damon, who runs Greenhorn Gardening, a blog/podcast which teaches Organic Gardening methods for beginners***.  It's a great book. Very, very readable. Not like any other tax book I have ever read. I got through it in a week, and promptly asked for a copy for Christmas that year.

This year I decided to re-read it in the midst of preparing taxes for ourselves and for our business. I made a note in the calendar to start working on taxes in January, placed Ms.Walker's book on my shelf, and then put off getting started until approximately the middle of March.

The book provides all kinds of information about deductions and such, with lots of clarifying examples. The first deadline for filing your taxes has come and gone, but there are still plenty of people who have filed for that automatically-granted extension allowing you to continue working on your 2011 taxes until mid-October. Self-Employed Tax solutions can help.

The part of the book I find most helpful is all of the information on good record-keeping practices, and the worksheets she provides for keeping track of all your stuff. She keeps it simple for those of you who aren't mathematically inclined, as many of her very creative clients are not.

I noticed when I visited her site on Saturday that she  has an ebook available with forms and information you can use for your 2011 taxes. I don't know what the ebook is like, but if its anything like the longer book, it is imminently practical.

And, yes, I am finishing this post on Monday, and I did succeed in finishing with the book on Saturday. I'm already trying to get a jump start on our taxes for next year.

Why is it that my tax return, the tax and tag on my car, and my auto insurance all come due in the same month?

***Damon's podcasts are easily downloadable through iTunes. Just go in and do a search on "organic gardening," visit this link, or you can find his latest offerings on the blog. But this post isn't about that.

What I've Been Up To Lately

Taxes. Taxes. More taxes. Taxes consumed me for a month and a half. That isn't to say that I was working on them non-stop during that time. I took long leisurely breaks encompassing days. But even when I wasn't actually doing the taxes they weighed heavily on my mind. It was hard to think about much of anything else.

Next year it's going to be different. Yeah. Sure it is.

Here is how it is going to be different. For the rest of the year I will be preparing quarterly statements. I'll be looking at home office expenses, business miles on the car, every receipt, every expenditure we make, and I'll be compiling that information every three months. I was doing those things already, but not in any systematic way. It's the system that has to change. I always thought I would be able to catch up on these tiny details later, and I did. But tax time would have been so much easier if I hadn't had to bring all of my accounting records up to date before getting started.

I am not an accountant. I do not know how to use any fancy algorithms, and automated software doesn't appeal to me. I do really simple stuff. But I am interested in the details, and I enjoy paperwork. I prepared closing statements for home loan closings for a while, so I am good at reconciling accounts. I can do this. If I keep up with it.

Keeping up with it is the hard part. I will happily tell you how I do that at a later date.

Highlights of the last couple of weeks:

• Finding some old friends on-line and making plans to catch up with them, once I've caught my breath from the residual tax flurry. 
• Trading emails with the effervescent Emily Fowler, who is ministering with her husband and children in France right now.
• Typing up a list of commitments I've made to myself at Stephen Covey's behest, as I've been reading his business leadership classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and resolving to review those commitments daily. So far it is really working for me. One of my commitments is to review my calendar every morning so I'll never forget another WIC assessment or go to an eye-appointment half an hour late ever again. There are stories that go with those examples.
• Deciding to participate in Classical Conversations with Parker next year, so that we can get down to this education thing in well organized fashion.
• Music and Books. More music and books.

I've been busy. But then it has been four our five months since I blogged anything on a regular basis.

One of my favorite website: this one helps with Scripture Memory

I have been trying to put something together to post on here for weeks, but it's all been a no-go. Briefly (or not so briefly), let me tell you about what has become one of my favorite websites: www.scripturetyper.com. This is a scripture memory service recommended by Ann Voscamp, who writes A Holy Experience.

First, why memorizing Scripture is a great idea:

• Scripture memory is awesome for a variety of reasons. With minimal planning it can be done anytime and anywhere. You'll never again be at a loss for something to do while sitting through a Commencement processional.

•  It's great for people who bore easily, because once you've memorized several passages, you always have them with you and you can go over them in your mind without using index cards for prompting. 

• It helps you to focus on whichever passage you are working on. It becomes a form of meditation (the filling kind as opposed to the emptying kind), and the words almost naturally take on their fuller meaning, as you spend more time thinking about what the passage is saying.

• Scripture memory combined with recitation helps you to turn your attention back to God when your mind starts becoming too self-focused during the course of your day.

• Your theology becomes richer and more complete as you start noticing connections between Scriptures and teachings that you may have been oblivious to before. This is a great boon in Bible Study and in Worship Service contexts. Last week in church I questioned a phrase used in one of the songs we sang, but quickly remembered where the idea had been drawn from because I had already memorized that verse. I was able to think about the context of the verse, and even look it up since I had a good idea of where that verse was located.

• Your memory gradually improves as you get into the habit of exercising it daily.

• You know you aren't wasting your time, because this is the word of God you're working on.

 So how, you may ask, does scripturetyper.com help? The site makes several valid claims about their service, but none of them are the reasons why I actually enjoy using their site.

• I think the best thing the website does is build in accountability and review. In fact, that is my favorite thing about it. You can set up your profile to send reminder emails on the schedule you choose. I have a reminder sent to me once a week, but I never need the reminder because...

• The site provides a review page that keeps up with a rotating schedule of scriptures for review. As part of my regularly scheduled study time, I check my review page daily.

• The website chooses the scriptures you review each day based on how many times the scripture has been typed, and when was the last time you typed it. This way you don't forget to review any of the passages you've memorized. It turns out that the scriptures don't stick with you so well if you don't take the time to go back over them often. This is particularly helpful if your memory retention has slackened over time.

• My favorite thing about it is that even if I don't have a physical person to recite my memory work to. I can test myself quickly and easily, without neglecting those verses that aren't necessarily in the front of my mind. Because you never know when you are going to need to access those verses that you first committed to memory nine months ago.

• Another helpful thing the site does is rank its users according to how many verses they have current. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, but for me it is motivation to continue committing the Bible to memory over time. I make a point of not worrying about my ranking, but it is fun to see that number getting smaller the more passages I work on.

The typing/kinesthetic aspect isn't so great for me. The website claims that muscle memory will help you with your memorization, but I have found that typing a verse and reciting it aloud from memory are two very different experiences. However combining the two is a great boon to retention. I don't feel like muscle memory does all that much for me, and at this point I continue to miss-type the same words over and over again.

You know what, if you have a student who has already mastered basic typing skills, I bet Scripture Typer would really help them build up their speed and accuracy. Since I've been typing for twenty years at this point, it may be too late for me to improve too terribly much, but for someone who is just starting out, I imagine this site would be a big help.

It's a pretty cool website, and I like it.

I've been listening to the Civil Wars this afternoon on NoiseTrade. I know I'm already way behind the times, because everyone who listens to Americana has heard them already, but we already knew I was way behind the times. Wow! I haven't gotten to spend any time with the lyrics, or a decent pair of speakers (do we even own a decent pair of speakers anymore?) but those harmonies are really beautiful.




And I've recently come to enjoy listening to a live recording. Back in the day when I was still really listening to music, when it played in my room basically every hour that I was awake, the live recording technology wasn't very good. You could listen to a live recording but it wasn't particularly enjoyable. Apparently that has changed sometime in the past 10 years.

I have many years of missed listening to catch up on. By the way, I'm looking to relearn how to listen to music. I'd like to start listening more closely, and putting what I hear to work, if only for the sake of talking about something I love, i.e. music. It doesn't do a whole lot of good to say, "Oh, I like that," and leave it there. I'd like to relearn, or learn for the first time, which elements I respond to and for what reasons. Who's your favorite online music reviewer?

Checking In: The half-baked Apology they tell you never to make.

I can't believe anyone is still reading this. Although all of my registered pageviews could only be my mother checking in on me from a frozen country.

Sometime this week:

Why I love www.scripturetyper.com. It isn't for any of the reasons that they advertise. Still, its a terrifically useful site, but only if you want to memorize Bible verses. Which I recommend doing.

I am a writer. It's time I started acting like one.

I fumble, stumble, think of Emily Dickinson, don't even know how to spell her name. I have so many questions, but I haven't learned yet how to research, how to find answers. I'm thirty-five years old. Spent a year in graduate school. Was that not enough time to learn the secret of how to find answers to questions?

I am intrigued by this line from the chorus of one of Levi Weaver's songs:

"The answer looks an awful lot like another question."

My Dad is a scientist and a professor. He does a lot of research, and one of the things he says over and over again is that every question a scientist asks brings forth more questions than it does answers. Our idea is that the universe gets smaller in our estimation as we come to understand more and more of it, but reality doesn't conform to that expectation. The more we know, the more we realize we do not know. I've spoken of using media medicinally on Facebook. I feel like Levi sort of got into my head with this one.



There are a lot of questions and very few certainties, and I first noticed the words of the song on my way home from Walmart one day, which is an event which often requires a bit of psychical reorientation.

Kicking the Air Around My House

I am kicking (literally) the air around the house this morning, trying to avoid doing anything (not literally), but it's such a yucky day outside that, even though I've been up and out of bed since around 4:40 this morning, I have the chorus of this song running through my head.




By the way, most of the lyrics don't apply. But I like the song anyway.

Now that I think about it, today might be a good day to pile up in the bed with the children and read the entire text of The Hobbit aloud. Not that my children would stand for it. Or that my vocal cords could live up to it.

I myself have never read more than a few pages of The Hobbit.

Parker tells me that even though it is Spring Break, and everyone else in town is out of school, that he cannot go the the library because he has to go to school today. At the church. And when I asked him who his teacher would be, he said, "No teacher." He is the one who is going to teach.

See what my cutting back on Facebook will give you? A Morning Song and an adorable Parker anecdote.

Response in the form of bulleted lists: a flash of light in the dark?

My parents are in Sweden for the semester. You can follow their adventures at http://bishopssweden.blogspot.com/ You'll notice a certain similarity between their blog and mine.

My Dad has said that the key to blogging seems to be short posts with lots of bullet points and photos. Using this strategy he has been able to plan out many blog posts in advance, which of course is enabling him to blog very consistently.

• Bullet points
• Lots of pictures

You'll notice my blog isn't big on pictures. I like pictures, it's just that I am not keen on borrowing them from other folk's sites, neither do I have the attention span necessary to suss out whether a particular image is borrowable or not. Borrowable? I'm surprised spell-check is accepting that one. At one time I was posting photos of my children, especially since it was a convenient way to share images with family members far away.  Then one day I realized that as open as I am willing to allow my life to be to scrutiny, posting pictures of my children on the internet might not be such a grand idea. It isn't just my privacy at stake, but theirs as well, and at this stage they can have no say in the matter. And it's a cruel, cruel world that dominates our understanding of the universe.

And I'm so very, very text-based, you see.

But I'm intrigued by this idea about bullet points. I wouldn't use them in the same way that he is, though he uses them to good effect in terms of what he is doing. What I think I've realized is that bullet points might be a strategy I can use to organize my thought. Surely they are a useful tool for study.

For example, I read an article last week in a collection of essays written by Ursula K. LeGuin. The article was called "Indian Uncles," published in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Reader, the Writer, and the Imagination. I think it's a really great book, by the way. Anyway, there were a couple of paragraphs in the essay that I really responded to, and I wanted desperately to say something about those to paragraphs, share them with you on a Saturday morning. I started writing, typed up the selection in question, and then was stymied, not knowing what to do next, how to proceed, how to make this brief commentary of mine into a complete and readable text. It does not good to quote someone at length without doing something with what they have said. This is a practice that has driven me away from reading certain other blogs.

That post remains in my drafts file. It may never be finished now. But what if I went back and looked at what it was I responded to? What if I made bullet pointed notes about what LeGuin was saying, and why it mattered to the context from which I was reading? What if I then responded myself, for myself in the form of bulleted notes? It's what I have been trying to do all along in my studies, but never have quite managed to. It is in essence what I do when I approach my current study of Leviticus every morning.

Responses to texts can be hard to come by. I value them. I desire them. I have a horrendous time trying to produce them.

Perhaps bulleted points could take place of the outline, because there is something in the idea of a formal outline that holds no practical appeal for me.

My blog isn't going to look like my Dad's blog. Not in its content. Not in its approach. Why? Because we aren't the same person, and we aren't trying to accomplish the same thing. That is okay.

Do you know this? Do you believe it?

I think that I am slowly and gropingly, haltingly making my way into those modes and approaches that will work specifically for me. Slowly, certainly slowly, progress is being made. And that is a good thing.

I haven't made a bulleted list yet, not in the way that I have envisioned for myself, but it is coming. I just have to let the idea germinate a little longer.

Peterson's Annotated Bibliography: Take & Read

I've published a quick review of Eugene Peterson's book, Take & Read: Spiritual Reading: An Annotated List, on Goodreads.com. I also publish it here, below. I'm very anxious to read another book of his, Eat this Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading, but to do that it looks like I'm going to have to request another Interlibrary Loan from our public library. My review of Take & Read:

First of all, I love a book like this. What better way to learn about books that it might not otherwise occur to me to read than to get recommendation from a wide and careful reader, who also makes notes about the things he reads? I'm also developing an appreciation for Eugene Peterson, whose paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, while an excellent interpretation of scripture, hasn't always appealed to me as a reader because of its heavily personal style. It made me happy to see Peterson recommending some works that have meant a lot to me already, from authors you might not expect. I love that he sees certain non-Christian writings as worthy recipients of spiritually inflected reading. I also appreciate and approve his emphasis on theology that is lived, not merely thought.

I have some questions for Mr. Peterson, particularly concerning the intersections between scholarship and imagination, as he briefly describes his encounters with each extreme. I'd like to know more about the ways in which he has reconciled the two, since I have recently become very suspicious of imaginative interpretations that seem to exploit rather than carefully handle biblical texts. I expect he has written about this in some of his other books, which sets me on a quest to find out what he has had to say in his many writings.

Oh the thrill of finding more and more books to read and explore. Peterson even recommends certain mystery novels, which is exciting. He urges his readers to start compiling their own lists of books that have contributed to their own spiritual formation, a grand task that I look forward to embarking on, if only I could develop the discipline necessary to read and make notes with better intentionality.

As if we were having a real conversation

As if we were having a real conversation, and you cared about those things that were occupying me yesterday, all the little gossips concerning my own life.

I went for the eye exam on Friday. It was a totally new experience for me, and I found out only later that I was over half-an-hour late for my appointment. I discovered my lateness on my own, and I almost wish someone there had told me I was late, so I'd know whether it was noted in my file.

One thing you will learn about me is that I hate being late. Why? Because I hate the idea of inconveniencing anyone in this whole entire world. It is not my job to inconvenience you. It is my purpose to make things easier, not harder. It is my intention to treat you as though you were the most important person in the world. Why? Because you are. You, whoever you are, are the most important person in the world. To who?

I think you know the answer to that one.

I turn again to Psalm 139 (NASB):

O LORD, Thou hast searched me and known me.

Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up;

Thou dost understand my thought from afar.

Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down,

And art intimately acquainted with all my ways.

Even before there is a word on my tongue,

Behold, O Lord, Thou dost know it all.

Thou hast enclosed me behind and before,

And laid Thy hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

But what God does is He refines you until you forget all about yourself. I haven't forgotten about myself yet. I wish I could. And this, the first few verses of Psalm 139, will be next on my list of verses to memorize.

Those glasses...He said I needed glasses only in the evenings, but I think I need them whenever I'm inside. He said I should wear them whenever they made me more comfortable. At church yesterday I kept thinking, "I need them now. This is one of those situations where I need them. I need them whenever I am talking to you, or listening, and these almost imperceptible dark shadows go leaping across the room." I never realized before how often my eyes were strained.

I have to wait for the call to get my glasses, and I wonder if, when I get them, I will realize that I've made a mistake, chosen the wrong frames. Will the discomfort of wearing the glasses outweigh the comfort of not straining my eyes. Which, will it turn out, causes the greatest headache?

And those appointments that I've been missing? I've started taking Ginko Biloba even though I mistrust vitamin supplements, hoping that I will regain some of that short-term memory I seem to be losing with age.

We are humbled every day by things we think we ought to be able to do on our own and without any help. We are crippled when we don't admit we need it. Help, that is. And I am encouraged by this...

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. II Corinthians 4:16-17

And when I am distressed I think of all of creation groaning.

Good day today, for this shall be a day with friends, and there is work to do, but somehow and someway it will be done. And we are all in this together, though sometimes we may forget it. And so the day begins...and I love the beginning of each new day.

Impulsive, yes, Impulsive, but not really

...reading this book, and I admit again and again, that there is something lacking in my understanding such that I don't always recognize or appreciate satire. I confess to you that I did not enjoy that book, what was it called? The one that Walker Percy wrote the introduction to, which was supposed to be this great comic novel...The name that would not come to me, but his book, Percy's, which was sitting on my shelf, if only I would to to it and open its contents.

I will be writing in fragments, things better relegated to the pages of my own journal than published on the web for anyone to see. Because writing carefully and consciously is too difficult, and this stand-still I have been facing must be remedied. I have called this thing a journal after all.

A Confederacy of Dunces, and I read it but didn't understand what all the fuss was about, or why it was supposed to be humorous to listen to some man's pompous negativities and odd adventures. And clearly I didn't get it the way others had. What was lacking?

I remember that line from Good Neighbors, when Margot, realizing that she has not sense of humor whatsover asks..."Someone please tell me...why is it funny?" Margot, oh Margot, sometimes I want to ask the very same question. What is it in this novel that I am entirely missing?

And you may think that I'm asking this rhetorically, or mocking somehow, but really it is a sincere question...this world being so bewildering at times and I just don't get it.

...listening to the sounds of the dishwasher, running in the other room, and the children flying about the house while I sit behind my closed door. It is morning, and my husband is caring for the children while I sit here reading and thinking and avoiding writing, only I can avoid it no longer. It is time to break out of this aimlessness.

Only the writing now must be aimless, but maybe it will speak to someone. Maybe you needed to read this this morning, or maybe I needed only to write it... It's like a puff of air from one of those air canisters.  You know, the kind you use to clear your computers keyboard of all the dust, and pet hair, and remnants of the shells of nuts you thoughtlessly consumed while watching TV.

I haven't done enough of this drifting, and sometimes drifting is entirely necessary. And why must I subject anyone to this? I don't know, but somehow I must.

Reading Wayne Booth and I don't get it. Sometimes I do, but this morning I do not.

A tangle. I can live with a tangle. A jumble may eventually release your creativity. Or constrain it. I haven't decided which.

Impulsive. Yes, impulsive, but not really.

Really it is under control, and I am merely blowing out the dust.

And I can hear the water in the pipes behind me, making noises because the dishwasher has emptied itself of water...

Notes from Kelly

• My friends now have me desperate for a pinterest account, and I have to wait. Less than 24 hours ago I wasn't even slightly interested, and now I'm just waiting for that invitation to come to my inbox because I realized I could pin art and architecture, and figure out some things about my personal style.

• Levi Weaver is giving away one of his albums today only (2/16/12). I jumped on that because I've been listening to some of his music on grooveshark, and wanted to free some of it from my laptop computer. It's nice being able to listen to music online, but since we don't have the sort of setup to expand our musical universe, it's good to have a format that can be loaded onto an mp3 player. Besides which, the only chance I really have to listen to music is while walking the dog. Earlier this morning I spent my precious music money on his live album, most of which can be listened to here.

• I'm trying to listen while I write, as well as get this thing posted before his free music offer expires, so I'll lastly share with you my most recent favorite blog Old House Dreams. I don't know if you know this about me, but I am curious about the internal structure of just about every house I see, so long as it isn't a garden home. I'm not particularly interested in those. Old House Dreams feeds that curiosity, as well as reminding me how interesting restoration and period detailing can be. I do have a degree in interior design after all.

• I think it would be really fun to work on a big restoration project with someone who really knows their stuff.

Data Entry

To me there is something very satisfying about data entry. I know it's weird, but I like it.  With data entry you sort of know that there is going to be a beginning, a middle, and an end, and I find that sort of definition comforting.

Just for Jim...

...a regrettably brief review from when I read That Hideous Strength last summer.


That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One of my favorite books of all time. I was amazed upon this reading at how much of the story I had forgotten. The contents of the objective room and Arthur and Camille's attitude towards weather were actually my firmest memories. I also realized how much of Lewis's non-fiction writing was inter-woven throughout as I encountered themes that he wrote about throughout his career. That should come as no surprise considering how integrated was both his philosophy and his theology.

Also, I love this book because at moments the story is very strange. I'll have to locate my own copy of the book and read it again sometime in the next several years.

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A Review of *Out of the Silent Planet*...

...which I read in a matter of two days, and it only took me that long because of inevitable interruption. I hardly believe in moderation in the course of reading. I flirted with the idea of telling you the entire story earlier today (why I picked the book up, why I had to stop reading at 2:00 in the afternoon, etc.), but you will have to content yourself with only a brief review. This review is adapted from one that was published on GoodReads only moments before:

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First I realized that I never could have read this book when I was any  younger. I lacked the patience, and could never have converted Lewis's descriptions into visualizations of thought. I was a great lover of dialogue in those days, and could not tolerate long expanses of description. It is a wonder I ever got through *Parelandra,* and no wonder I gained little from the experience.

This is a work of science fiction--and all that description implies. It is also a bit of a theological fancy. Makes for a great story of course.

Lewis envisions a society totally unlike ours, but similar to what ours might have been like, and then introduces elements of our own society as distorted by the fall of mankind, introduces them as a stranger would, in fact. You must, of course, read the book to find out what happens in consequence.

This book was of course wonderful, and I certainly suggest you read it.. I don't love it like I love *That Hideous Strength,* the third and final volume in the series, but still I say that it was very good. I like the way Lewis reveals himself as... at the end. I shall not say, for it might just spoil the book.

No really, the Lewis bit is only incidental to the rest of the narrative, but I like it. And it ties the book in more clearly with the first chapter of *Perelandra,* which has long been my favorite chapter of that particular book. Oh, yes, I love, love, love that first chapter. I have even quoted it from time to time.

I look forward to reading the whole book [*Perelandra*]in full again now that I am old enough to appreciate it as I never could have in my youth. I'm reminded of the inscription at the beginning of *The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,* which I first read when I was very young...and needs must quote here at some much later date.

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