what i've learned

What I learned from Watching Snakes on a Plane:

• snakes go crazy if you spray pheromones on laes or anything for that matter
• learn karate
• to protect your mouth from a snake's poisonous venom, swish olive oil around in your mouth, then swallow some
• if you're the designated "jerk" in the movie, you will be killed by whatever creature is named in the title, and it will probably be the grossest scene
• small dogs make great decoys

grade school

Below is a picture of me when I was about 7 or 8 I think. I'm on the right with a huge grin and only a couple teeth. The girl on the left is my best friend from birth to 16 or 17. We lost touch in the later years of high school and have just recently found each other again. It's interesting how you never stop changing. Someone who had been by your side for so many years, can miss a few years, and then seem like a stranger.

Why is it that I find so many things more beautiful than you, Lord?

fare thee well sir anton

Woodrow the Wagoneer

the end is near

This note was taped to my door.

There's not a "for sale" sign on my car, so this is very promising.
It looks like Woodrow the Wagoneer may soon have a new owner.

the ever important courtesy flush

There comes a point in everyone's life where the rules of restroom etiquette must be reviewed. Either because the person has gotten out of the habit of practicing them, or was never taught them. I consider myself more of the teacher trying to educate. Attempting to share my knowledge with others.

I have made some very important observations in the restroom here at my office. It is shared by several companies on the same floor, and those who sneak up from other floors to do their dirty business. The past few weeks, I have personally felt attacked by women's lack of etiquette in the restroom. I'd like to go over a few rules:

1. Squatting is a privilege not a right.
If you are unable to relieve yourself by squatting and keep the seat clean, or you do not have the muscular control to relieve yourself without shaking - you must resort to sitting - using the available seat covers of course. This is not only for maintaining a strict code of hygeine for those who may use the stall after you, but also for the sanity of all who use the restroom.

2. Modern day plumbing. The toilet is a disposal unit. However, to properly dispose of waste in a toilet, you must flush it. Meet modern day plumbing. The first toilets were noted as early as 2500 BC, so let's not pretend that we don't understand how they work. Friends make Friends flush.

3. The courtesy flush. I have found that many women do not understand this concept, and I would say this is the most important one to practice. The consequences of not doing this linger, possibly longer than an hour. A basic system that I like to share with others is a typical flush - drop - flush rule. You can repeat this pattern as often as needed. You'll find that you'll feel free to take care of any business that you may have with this system, but that those around you will appreciate you as well. Let them not know by the odor, but by the number of flushes.

4. Hand washing. For this particular part I would like to insert a direct quote from wikipedia.org regarding the act of hand washing:
"To maintain good hygiene, hands should always be washed after using the toilet, changing a diaper or tending to someone who is sick; before eating; before handling or cooking food and after handling raw meat, fish or poultry. Conventionally, the use of soap and running water and the washing of all surfaces thoroughly, including under fingernails is seen as necessary. One should rub wet, soapy hands together outside the stream of running water for at least 5 seconds, before rinsing thoroughly and then drying with a clean or disposable towel. After drying a dry paper towel should be used to turn off water and open exit door. Moisturizing lotion is often recommended to keep the hands from drying out, should ones hands require washing more than a few times per day."

I've decided that I'm going to post these rules inside each stall in our bathroom and see what the response is like.

"plastic Baggies full of dimes"

Tonight I was reminded of God’s provision. Of how He has given us a church family, and through them we are cared for. Now I’m not going to pretend that we, as a church, never let people down. We do. We do it often. I, too, have been hurt by the church. That's part of the reality of living in community with each other; you have to learn how. But that’s not what I want to write about right now. Tonight as I read through more of Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, I read this:

When I announced during worship that I was pregnant, people cheered…And then almost immediately they set about providing for us. They brought clothes, they brought me assurance that this baby was going to be a part of the family. And they began slipping me money…Now a number of the older black women live pretty close to the bone financially on small Social Security checks. But routinely they sidled up to me and stuffed bills in my pocket – tens and twenties. It was always done so stealthily that you might have thought they were slipping me bundles of cocaine. One of the most consistent donors was a very old woman named Mary Williams, who is in her mid-eighties now, so beautiful with her crushed hats and hallelujahs; she always brought me plastic Baggies full of dimes, noosed with little wire twists.

I remembered emotions that I had felt when my mom would tell me about life when she first moved to Harlingen, a small city near the border of Mexico in Texas. A lot of the feelings were empathizing with my mother, knowing her fears, insecurities, and that she was alone in a new place and deeply hurt. She had grown up in a Presbyterian church in Illinois, but hadn't really been much since the marriage. Once the divorce was final, my brother and I accompanied my mother to the "The Valley" as the area where Harlingen is called. My mom started attending church again. The members soon realized the strain on my mother and knew what little money she had, and a miracle happened. This little church of people that barely knew us started to gather food and pampers and clothing to make sure that my mom had less to worry about. But I don’t know if that was why they gave. Maybe it was seeing her holding an adorable blonde haired, blue eyed girl named Sara. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think that they gave because they felt they had to. I think they gave because they knew that was how to love us at that moment. And though I was not old enough to remember this miracle, I’m humbled to have been a recipient of such compassion at such a young age.

Reading about Anne getting “plastic Baggies full of dimes” cut straight to my heart. And I want to say that phrase makes a statement about what our life together should look like. We are moved to serve others and love others. And it's in the sacrifice of giving when it means the most. Like the story of the widow's offering in Mark. God’s provision is consistent and always enough. It doesn’t mean that we will not suffer or won’t be in situations where we’re not comfortable. But it's the fact that we're present and we see what ways we can love the other.

circumstantial or something like that

I read a short story today by my friend Martha. She’s a writer for a publishing company and writes with such ease and honesty. I enjoyed the piece very much. As I read I kept hoping for a certain ending… the happy ending. Where everything goes back to normal and there’s no sign of there even being a problem. But the story’s ending surprised me and made me stare blankly at the computer screen. Why did it have to be like that, I thought. Why can’t things just go back to the way they were? ...Like my family. My parents divorced when I was two. I have no memories of all of us being together. Although, there were those few times growing up that the four of us, mom, dad, brother and I gathered for awkward Christmases. Usually we just swapped houses each year. It was really brave of my parents to try. Thanksgiving was always mom and me together with friends. When I was young I would wish that they would get back together so that I could be normal. I was embarrassed to admit that I came from a divorced family. But I wouldn’t want the same thing today. God, in His magnificent grace, used a broken family to save me.

The story that Martha wrote also brings to light the importance of growth out of tragedy and out of suffering. In the life of the mother in the story, it seemed as though she allowed circumstance to decide her life. And I wonder how much of my life has been decided purely by circumstance, rather than making a decision based on how I should be living and sticking with it regardless of its consequence. I’m afraid to leave things behind enough that, I’d sometimes rather the circumstance of the situation decide for me. I don’t want to be responsible. [enter Faith, stage left]. Sometimes we have to lose something because it's for a greater good. There’s a an anonymously written poem Anne Lamott quotes in her book, Traveling Mercies, that I really like,

“After we jump into the darkness of the unknown, faith lets us believe that we will either land on solid ground, or we will be taught how to fly.”

Either one of those options seems stable to me. And I always prefer to fly. Sometimes you land on the ground further away from the spot where you started, and other times, you are in the air wondering why you ever hesitated to leap. I hope that these thoughts stay longer and delve deeper in my heart. I may not be able to change the circumstance for which I’m placed, but I most certainly have faith to pursue an eternal King with the confidence that by His hand I will be changed for His good purpose.

The Man with the Hoe

My favorite professor in college was Dr. Charles "Chuck T" Trevathan. As a sociology major, Chuck T's classes were the ones that I would try to get into as much as possible each semester. One Fall I had him for three classes. I never got tired of him. My senior year he gave me a book of poetry with a letter to me in the front cover. I'll add that in as I don't have the book with me here at work.

There was this one poem that we read in class and that I know was one of his most read. It was written by Edwin Markham, and I've read it over and over before bedtime, as I've done with so many of the poems within the book's covers. He wrote it after viewing a painting by Jean Millet, The Man with the Hoe.

The Man with the Hoe
Edwin Markham
God made man in His own image. In the image of God He made him.--Genesis

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?

Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And markt their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with censure of the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packt with danger to the universe.

What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rife of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quencht?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidlous wrongs, Immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

I touched a roach's leg last night. Willingly.