The past couple of days have been hectic. Saturday saw the return of the GrandPea to camp and an unanticipated visit to an Urgent Care clinic for LightGirl. It seems that she may have torn her meniscus while at hockey camp last week. She’s on crutches now and we’re wending our way through the medical system to see how we should best proceed. Sunday began with a family breakfast then packing, sorting laundry and good-byes. Good-bye to GreatPea (my aunt), LightMom and GrandPea, as LightChildren were off to a week with their other grandparents. LightHusband and I are back at camp. And peace. And quiet. And phone calls to doctors. And just a little bit of worry.

LightMom and I went to a quilt exhibit together.  She loves to look at quilts almost as much as I do.  The difference being that I like to also make them.  We saw these quilts at the Shelburne Museum.  The exhibit was called:  Something Pertaining to God:  The Patchwork Art of Rosie Lee Tompkins.  Rosie Lee (not her real name, she took a pseudonym so she wouldn’t become too proud) said she would think of something important when she pieced, you know something pertaining to God … I really liked that.  I think about those things when I’m piecing and quilting too.  If I’m making a quilt for someone specifically, I pray for that person or their family.  Or I weave thoughts and dreams for them into the quilt.  This is likely not unique to me and/or Rosie.  I think that many quilters weave hopes and dreams into their quilts.  I liked the way that Rosie put it “… something pertaining to God.”

Rosie’s voice is tied up in her quilts (and quilted book pouches … she made some to match the quilts).  She died a couple of years ago.  I wish her voice was verbal instead of fabric.  I have no doubt she has some wonderful earthy wisdom to pass on.  I’ll bet it’s colorful and interesting too … told with a twist.  Born and raised in Arkansas, then she raised a family of five in California.  I’m certain she had stories to tell.  What a treat it would have been to sit quietly, stitching and listening as she sewed and talked … just to hear her voice and learn her technique.

I have sat and stitched with other quilters; learned their techniques, talked with them, cried with them, shared secrets with them.  I’ve learned over the years which voices to listen to.  Which have knowledge that I can profit from and which are fun to chat with, and which will give me support.  Who to call for help with applique or help with quilting or help with tricky set-in seams.  I’ve learned how to sort out the voices … who will tell me what is tried and true.

I’ve been thinking about that today.  I’ve been thinking about voices and who I listen to.  And who I don’t.  And why.  I’ve come to love the internet.  It’s a great place.  You can find anything there that you want.  For instance, I scared myself skinny (well … almost) about LightGirl’s meniscus tear this morning.  You have to be selective about which voices you’re going to listen to out on the big wide internet.  There are voices out there which will scare you and cause you pain.  I’ve found over time that when I keep going back to those voices (getting scared and/or hurt), that the authors are not the inflictors of the fear and/or pain … I am.  The site is static.  I am going to it.  If I keep going to it and getting scared, then I need to stop.  So I do.  As in this morning, I stopped looking for information when it was causing me too much worry about LightGirl’s condition.  I’ll wait til we get a definitive diagnosis from a real doctor, instead of the dr. dolittle on the internet.  I love the fact that I have control over who I listen to and when and why.  So that if I’m in pain or fear I can stop listening to that voice.   And listen instead to the voices of quilts or quilters … or even, the Holy Spirit.

So … the glove was thrown down. I was asked to play with the boys. Doug tagged me to play a music game that guys usually only play with other guys. They don’t do this to be exclusive. It starts when they are early teens and it’s difficult to talk to girls. So they talk to each other and create their own language around music. Girls never quite get included in this club. They also never quite develop the love affair in quite the same way that guys do. But most of us do love music, so I was glad to get this tag and share my shuffle with y’all.

Here are the rules. Just write down the first 10 songs that your iPod plays when it’s on shuffle. No sweat. So. Here are my first 10:

1. “O, The Deaths We Would Have Known If You Had Not Been With Us” by Seth Woods on Songs from the Voice, vol 1 – Please Don’t Make Us Sing That Song

2. “Truganini” by Midnight Oil on 20,000 Watt R.S.L.

3. “(Nothing But) Flowers” by Talking Heads on Naked

4. “Praise Him” by Burning Spear on Jah Kingdom

5. “Yahweh” by U2 on How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

6. “The Pink Panther Theme (Dance Club Mix)” by Dream Chaser on The Pink Panther Theme Remixed

7. “Psalm 114: B’tseth Israel (When Israel Went Forth from Egypt)” by San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble on Ancient Echoes: Music from the time of Jesus and Jerusalem’s Second Temple

8. “It Is Well With My Soul” by Audio Adrenaline on Underdog

9. “Quiche Lorraine” by B-52s on Wild Planet

10. “Somewhere I Belong” by Linkin Park on Meteora

This was a welcome respite from the other processing I’ve been doing of late. So I’m grateful to Doug. Now, to spread the love … I’m going to tag Mak, Julie, Erin, Scott, and Paul(ie).

Grace tagged those of us who read her blog (so now it’s dangerous 😉 ) to tell the world what books we’re reading … just so that she can get a sneak peek into our libraries. Well … since she kindly gave us a sneak peek into her reading list, I thought it only just that I comply.

Drumroll, please … here are seven books that I am currently wending my way through (in no particular order):

>> Cry Of The Soul (How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions About God), by Dr. Dan Allender & Dr. Tremper Longman III – an excellent book about emotions that our culture has deemed negative but that can bring us closer to the heart of God if we will embrace them with a heart that is seeking after Him.

>> The Artists Way, by Julia Cameron – for anyone seeking to find their inner artist, or give it a nudge. A really wonderful book.

>> The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart – a great book about a historian walking across Afghanistan during the current war. But it’s also about how we humans view one another and get along.

>> Healthy Congregations (a systems approach), by Peter L. Steinke – a good solid piece on how people in churches actually work together in healthy ways, and how to build on that.

>> Desire of the Everlasting Hills (The World Before and After Jesus), by Thomas Cahill – the third in his “Hinges of History” series (the first two were How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews). I’ve read the first two and am now thoroughly hooked. Cahill has a fascinating perspective on history and is a great story teller.

>> Exiles (Living Missionally In a Post-Christian Culture), by Michael Frost – required reading for those in the emerging conversation and I’m behind.

>> On Writing Well (The Classic Guide to Writing Non-Fiction), by William K. Zinsser – LightMom gave me this book recently and I’m really enjoying it. It’s helping me to think about how I write, and why. Perhaps you, dear reader, will even see a difference here and there as a result of this book.

Bonus … arrived yesterday and I can hardly wait – Organic Community (creating a place where people naturally connect), by joseph r. myers.  I often just throw books in our familial shopping cart on amazon.com, sometimes LightHusband places an order, then I get a surprise.  Yesterday was such a day.  I think I’ll be reading this while we’re in Vermont.

As far as tagging people … if you read this and feel inspired, please let me know in the comments. I’d love to see what books you’re reading.

LightHusband has been telling me for years to write.  He kept encouraging me when it fell on deaf ears and I did not believe him, or perhaps I couldn’t.

A couple of years ago I found out about blogging and found little bits of courage here and there.  I found that regular practice fed the spring and set my imagination free.

Tonight I got word that I’ve been published for real.  I was asked for a submission and had an actual deadline and well, everything.  And my piece was selected among other submissions for publication.  All of which means … I have more work to do practicing and polishing and learning.  But, I am encouraged and thrilled and … well … happy down in my soul.

So you can read the June issue of Porpoise Diving Life to see my piece and read other wonderful pieces to on women in ministry, all written by some fabulous women writers and bloggers.  There is also an interview with Rose Swetmen and some book and music reviews.  My piece is called The Mirror and it’s a short story.   But go read the whole issue, all of it is good.

I read somewhere, recently and I can’t remember where, that we exist mostly in the borderlands between chaos and order. We live in that tension between the two. If our world were to slip into complete chaos, well, everything would fall out of place and fly around. But, alternatively, if we lived in a perfectly ordered world where nothing ever went wrong that, too would have it’s own set of problems. The writer used the allegory of a waterfall with the smooth pool at the top to symbolize order and jumbled mess at the bottom to symbolize chaos, but it’s that rhythmic pulse of water falling in the middle that we live in … those borderlands. Where things are always just barely in order and always almost slipping out of our hands.

I loved that analogy. It really helped me to think through my life and see my house more clearly. I’ve been working my way through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I’m doing it for a number of reasons. I started because my psychiatrist recommended it. But he recommended it because I found a website of an old friend and the website made me jealous. Well, jealous is not quite the right word for it. It wakened old dreams and sent them surging up to the top of the pool again. I told my psychiatrist about this website and my friend and how focussed my friend seemed and how scattered I seem. That was the moment when I got a doctor’s note to quit my day job (such as it is) and begin quilting. To focus on that as who I am. He also recommended this book. It’s the first self-help book which has made sense to me. I have many of them. Too many, perhaps. But this one — this one fits me.

It’s encouraging me to do some other things. Things like haul out my books and begin to design a Native American quilt that I’ve wanted to do for several years. Begin to write some longer pieces of more fictional writing. Begin to take Arabic. Begin to do some biblical research on some questions I have about some women in ministry issues. In other words, begin to live my life again. Pick up where I left off before the conservative church got ahold of me 17 years ago and tried to fit my round peg into their square hole … for no other reason than that the conservative church is afraid of chaos.

What I learned there is that the conservative church lives not in the borderlands, but in fear. The conservative church seems to believe that in order to be in “God’s will” they must swim to the pool at the top of the waterfall. Or manipulate conditions such that they manage to live in that pool. But reality in this life and this world dictates that we live inside the waterfall itself. If you have ever sat near a waterfall and watched it for any length of time, you will begin to notice that there is a rhythm and rhyme to the falling water. There is beauty there. The falling water can be predicted and controlled to a certain extent.

So, for me … I am learning how to love God and my neighbor from within the waterfall. What will that look like? What is my waterfall going to be? Where are my borderlands? Have I told you that I love a good swim …

It’s Saturday afternoon and I have a spring cold along with some sort of intestinal thing. It’s just a stomach ache, but combined with the cold, I’m feeling bleak and aguey. Dim, without spark. LightGirl has team tryouts today. I wanted to go watch, but I have no motivation and then there’s this aguey feeling. So I’m on the sofa searching out new front doors for our house, this does nothing for my spirit as the door I found is made of Brazilian mahogany, so I think I will single-handedly demolish the rainforest.

I began serious work again yesterday on my snowball quilt from the Kaffe Fassett workshop I took in November. Here is my first shot at it on my design wall. I don’t like it. There are some blocks that are too light. I took them out and replaced them with others. It’s better now. The intersections between each square will have small burgundy diamonds which will give it a lot of spark. I spent some time this afternoon figuring out how many large squares I will need to make a bed sized quilt. The answer … 193. I may have cut that many already, but I’m not sure. Next I need to get some border fabric. I’m no longer certain of the fabric I did purchase when I took the class.

I’ve also been following, but not participating in an e-mail conversation about how to be more “green.” The conversation was initiated by my sister-in-law. LightMom contributed a link to an EPA site where one can calculate one’s carbon footprint. Another person pushed back a bit asking questions about the increased costs of production for hybrid vehicles and flourescent bulbs, not to mention the somewhat poisonous ingredients that those products contain (mercury, and battery acid).

Don’t get me wrong, I think these conversations are vitally important. I’m just depressed. They’re coming about 20 years too late. I was on the debate team when I was in highschool. I don’t want to get into specifics about when that was, but I will say that I’ve passed my 25th reunion … Bono and I are the same age … separated by about 1 year and 4 days. In any case, the question up for debate my senior year (late 1970’s) was whether or not the United States needed to reduce its dependence upon foreign sources of oil. We drew straws to see who would debate the positive and who the negative. I was on the negative team, which meant that I argued to continue with the status quo. It didn’t matter. I still needed to be well versed in all the arguments that our positive opponents might throw our way.

Here’s the sad thing.  The technologies that are being touted as so new and vital today … yeah … well.  They’ve been around since the late 1970’s.  The automotive industry has been able to manufacture hybrid vehicles for decades.  They simply had no incentive to do so.  No one gave them any.  Not our government.  Not us.  No one.

I’ve known since 1979 that our gas prices would hit $3.00 a gallon at some point.  The only miracle that it didn’t happen before now.  I’ve been waiting and watching for this for years.  The Europeans have paid these prices since the late 1970’s, it’s about time we start ponying up.

This has been coming for a long, long time.  So now it’s cool.  But after all of the Green Up Days I worked on.  After the days, weeks and months I worked canvassing for a National PIRG to get a stupid bottle bill passed in Virginia and we still don’t have one.  So now at the last minute, it’s trendy and Consumerigon can make a few extra bucks on so-called “green” products.  I just hope and pray our national ADD doesn’t kick in and our attention turns elsewhere at the crucial moment.  These changes need to be life changing … like the sort of diet where one loses weight and keeps it off, rather than yo-yoing for years.  They need to be slow, steady and permanent.  And I’m not certain we’re capable of that.

We’re in the midst of turning over a new leaf here in the LightHouse. The other day, LightGirl announced that she rather preferred her friend’s home which was neat, tidy **and** artsy to ours, which is just sort of cluttery, but we do have a fabulous mural on one wall.

This is the long way of saying that I’m trying to go grocery shopping with some regularity these days. I’m trying to prepare dinner each evening and have the menus planned ahead of time with the food on hand. This seems simple and ordinary. I used to do this as a matter of course, but we’ve fallen out of the habit. So we’re relearning old ways.

All of this lead me to the grocery store this morning and a short wait in line. I’m not the best waiter-in-line there ever was and there was a very sweet elderly couple in front of me who required extra patience. So I began to peruse the magazine covers. This one caught my eye:

This is a tiny image and I apologize, but the headline reads: Failing Our Wounded. I itched to purchase the magazine, but reasoned that I can read the article on-line. Then continued in my head with, I don’t want to … it will only make me bitter. Rather it will continue the bitterness that I have carried for years. The Army and armed forces in general is a war machine that disposes of it’s parts that are no longer useful. It spits them out like a shark does it’s worn out teeth. New sharp teeth spring up to replace them and the shark swims on without realizing or caring about the teeth that have since fallen to the ocean’s bottom. This is appropriate in the life of a shark. Afterall, teeth are not life forms. In the words of the immortal Big Bird, they do not eat or breath or grow.

It is not so appropriate when we are speaking of humans. One of those humans happens to be my husband. Several thousand of them happen to be the young men and women who are serving or did serve in Iraq. Machines which are powered by humans cannot be treated like machines. We must find a different way to accomodate their wounds, fear and grief.

As I stood there looking at the magazine rack attempting to overcome my bitterness and rage, I noticed something else. This magazine looked like a black eye in the midst of partying Rome. The rest of the magazine cover stories had to do with pain too. But it was pain of a different sort. It was the pain of drug and alcohol abuse of celebrities. The pain of post-partum depression in celebrities. Washingtonian magazine was hawking Home Design. Several magazines were offering tips to reduce weight and sizes (get better abs, etc.).

When I’m out driving around I see plenty of cars with the yellow ribbon magnets on them proclaiming devotion to the needs of our troops.

But just exactly how are we supporting our troops? I thought about that as I looked at the magazines there on the rack. I thought about radically the lives of our troops have changed and how little mine has. My life has changed not at all since we went to war. The price of gas has gone up. Once in a while I make a quilt for the wounded soldiers to show my support. But I think about the stories the LightMother tells me of the sacrifices that were made on the homefront to support the war effort during WWI and WWII and I wonder just what we could actually do to dig down deep and really support our troops? What could we give to make sure that they are supported in the field? What could we do to make sure they have the appropriate medical care when they are wounded? What are we doing, as a country at war, to support our troops?

I’ve been double-tagged (this time by Brother Maynard), which is not to say double-teamed, because it was done independently and innocently.  I guess this means I have friends.  Which is a very nice thing to have …

1) What’s the most fun work you’ve ever done, and why? (two sentences max)

Scoring LightGirl’s hockey games.  I’ve just trained for it, but I know I’ll have a ball and better still it will force me to pay attention.

2) Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did? (one sentence max)

Continue learning Arabic and languages in general; I pick up languages really easily and I’d love to keep up with Arabic it’s a beautiful language.

3) Name one thing you’ve always wanted to do but keep putting it off? (one sentence max)

Paint my bedroom … and make into a safe haven; it’s always been the last room in the house to get decorated (that’s a euphemism for never).

4) What two things would you most like to learn or be better at, and why? (two sentences max)

Arabic because I want to get back to my first love, Middle Eastern studies, and to be able to work towards reconciliation in the Middle East.   Art quilting theory to move towards more art sense in my quilting.

5) If you could take a class/workshop/apprentice from anyone in the world living or dead, who would it be and what would you hope to learn? (two more sentences, max)

Georgia O’Keefe to learn how she looked at the world and to see it through her eyes and with her sense of color and light.

6) What three words might your best friends or family use to describe you?

funny, creative, generous (two of my best friends came up with these for me 😉 ) a fourth word is “tease” … they are so fond of me.

7) Now list two more words you wish described you…

wise (again with the wise), skinny

8) What are your top three passions? (can be current or past, work, hobbies, or causes– three sentences max)

redemption, history, fabric (not necessarily in that order)

9) Write–and answer–one more question that YOU would ask someone (with answer in three sentences max)

What’s your background, as in where do you come from?
I was born in western Massachusetts, spent time in Kansas and then raised in Vermont.  Went to college in upstate New York and I’ve lived in northern Virginia for most of my adult life after a couple of years in Washington DC.

Now … who to spread this virus, I mean, who to tag?

Hmmmm … GoldenGirl, BrickDude, LinusLetters, StaplerGuy, WittyPoet

My dog Sam loves to chase tennis balls.

Tonight’s weather: partly cloudy, full moon, chance of rain … temps in the lower 50’s!

And the view cannot be beat … it makes up for the Manu-Aire that wafts up the lake occasionally.