Is there really forever?

At Nic and Nikki-the-Lurker's wedding ceremony, David-the-Artist-Pastor said..."The thing you will hear most today is the word perfect.  Doesn't she look perfect?  Aren't they a perfect couple? The flowers are perfect..." 

He then went on to inform the couple that there would come a time when things would not be perfect.  When they would even question if they should be together. It seemed an awkward interjection into the ceremony that was for a marriage just starting, but if you've been married longer than three years, you know this to be true.

Marriage isn't perfect.  Sometimes it isn't even just okay.  Yet there are expectations that it should be.  We have years of hollywood programming that tell us it must be so.

The reality is that we can't stand to live that open.  We get injured and we withdraw. Not all of our needs are met. We get resentful of our spouse's weaknesses and are blind to our own. We grow and become...and not always together.

Worse, nothing in our culture is designed to make marriage a success.  Demanding jobs. Demanding hobbies. Hours worth of activity that lacks engagement on a heart level.  It doesn't take much to move from being soulmates to being all about the business of being married.  And the drift happens so slowly that we can scarcely perceive it.

And most of us settle for that. We think it is what it is.  And that is exactly the time that someone else will come along who will remind our hearts we want more.

I heard Tommy Nelson say to a room full of pastors once that it starts like ping-pong.  He says something, she thinks about what to say next.  She sends an e-mail. He composes a quippy response. The only way to stop it is to refuse to return the serve.  Heart lines get crossed long before the physical ones do.

Yet another set of friends this week filed for divorce. And I have wept for what that means.  My friend, Lynette-the-Cowgirl, says "We are all just one decision away from being homeless."  Divorce breaks the home and shatters the community of which the people are part.  And the couple never realizes the full impact of any of that until they walk through it.  The pain sends ripples far beyond just the two of them.

John and I haven't divorced, but we do know what it is like to have your marriage flatline and come back from it.  Not only is it possible, but you can gearshift into something better on the other side.  If you end your story and start a new one with someone else, you never get to that place because it requires decades and not months.

For my friends who are married, is your marriage in a good place?  Do the two of you touch?  When is the last time you talked about anything real? Shared an inside joke? Called because you missed each other and not because you simply should touch base? When is the last time you shared your weaknesses?  How long is your list of things you are angry about?  Can you confront where you need to confront or is that simply too exhausting? Can you forgive and "keep no record of wrongs"?  What is the dream you share together?

You are the only one who can create forever.  You and a heavy dose of loving your spouse like Christ loves.  The hero always lays down his life for others.  The villain chooses for himself.   Your friends can't help you.  They can only mourn the loss if you don't make it.

The Circle Game

David-the-Artist-Pastor presented one of the best messages I've heard--possibly lifetime--this Sunday. 

If you live life for very long, you learn that God's economics are the opposite of the ones the world champions. 

I could write more, but David was pretty articulate....checkout the podcast of The Circle Game...7/25/2010.

Bento Class with Shannon of Bentolunch.Blogspot.com

Shannon-the-Bento-Master cutting strawberries into hearts.

Only in the serendipity of the digital world would it be possible to:

a) Find out there is an extremely talented woman in the art of bentos only about 15 minutes from me.

b) Be able to contact her and ask her would she, please, please, please come host a workshop to teach me and some friends.

Yesterday morning, Shannon of bentolunch.blogspot.com came to teach a class at my house on bentos.  (If you've never heard of bento lunches, check out her blog.  She has fantastic ideas.)

The idea behind bentos is that lunch is healthy, requires no prep work on the part of the person eating it (no heating, cutting, etc) and that it is visually interesting.  Shannon introduced us to all kinds of simple tools and tricks.

Erin-the-Wonder-Woman with her dinosaur bento.

My favorite was the way Shannon makes sandwiches.  She rolls the bread out with a rolling pin then either uses cookie cutters or a "lunch punch" to simultaneously get rid of the crusts and cut the sandwiches into fun shapes.  Shannon also sometimes rolls the sandwiches into spirals and cuts sushi style.

Shannon also said that not every piece of the bento has to be art.  Sometimes, you just pack basics and add one or two things to make it special. (Like a strawberry cut into a heart or cheese cut into stars on top of a salad.)

After the class, Nancy-the-Insightful and I went to Minoya in Plano which has a great bento box selection. We then went to Williams Sonoma to pick up one of Shannon's favorite tools--a set of 12 decorative cutters which she uses to make the mini stars, hearts and other items to make her beautiful bentos.


Shannon brought some of her favorite books with her.  In looking through them all, I liked this one the best for learning all about bentos from scratch.  Not only is it a good "idea" book, but it also outlines some simple concepts that you can use to make your lunch (and your families lunches) more interesting than a sandwich and a back of chips.

As it turned out, Nancy and I ran a bit late on our shopping trip, so I wound up eating my delicious lunch in the car on the way to Keene to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday. 

It really was fun to open the box and see something that pretty. Plus, I noticed that having a lot of different types of flavors and textures mean you are satisfied with a lot less food.  I definitely recommend getting into bento lunches!

Ignoring your Heart...(and other stupid ideas)

Once upon a time we were 16, and everything was so big and important.  Then the real world crept in.  We chased degrees. Got our own place.  Learned the dream job doesn't exist.  That health isn't a given.  Learned that there is a lot more work to the fairy tale wedding than is ever mentioned in the bridal magazines...even if you are only the bridesmaid.  

So we settled.  And we compromised.  And somewhere we got really, really good at telling our heart it didn't matter.

Except it does.

There is something real and true to the longings of our heart.  To the need to be wanted. The desire to be loved.  To have someone really "get" us.  The deeply personal dreams at the core of us that we wouldn't dare tell anyone.

The funny thing is that the path to True Love or our Hearts Desire is rarely as advertised. You can follow all the steps and do everything on the checklist and still wind up empty.  Religion hasn't helped this either.  It has its own list of rules to follow to get the big payoff.  The thing is that at some point we find the payoff we've been promised isn't there.

Not only that, but in chasing the carrots of True Love and Hearts Desire, the world has a host of fakes.  They are usually preceeded with "if only I had ________."  The Blank is intensely personal.  It can be a role, a response from someone, a job, a spouse, a different spouse, money, health, a talent, beauty, youth....it's size and shape are closely associated to the intricate design of our own hearts.

And at some point when your heart deficit is at its worst, when you've ignored the gap between what you have and what you long for, a very good fake will be offered.  Something that looks really, truly real.  Except that somewhere in the back of your mind you will know that it's not.  There will be that check in your gut that chasing after The Blank will make you lose yourself.  That it will cost you something you can't yet quantify.

It is at this point that you have to do The Work.  There are no checklists or workbooks for this.  The thing is it requires waiting and listening and being able to long without running after fulfillment.  It requires showing up and being present and intensely feeling the gap of the "not okay."  The Work is hard. And I don't know how you do The Work without God.

AW Tozer writes, "God is a person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and sufferes as any other person may. In making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions.  The continuous and unembarrassed interchange of love and thought between God and the soul  is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.  This intercourse between God and the soul is known to us in conscious personal awareness."

All I know is that if you refuse The Blank and you truly show up in the moment to moment, then God shows up too.  It requires total honesty, not just with God, but with yourself.  About your failures. Your disppointments.  About all of the scaffolding you've put in place to shore things up and make them look pretty. It requires a relentless pursuit of the real. A deep acknowledgement of your own heart. And mostly, a complete and total commitment to doing whatever it is that God asks you to do when He shows up. The Work is desperately personal and it is so much easier to settle for The Blank.

But The Work is the only way we ever get to be who we really truly are. And The Work shapes our hearts in a way to cause The Blank to not really fit at all.

I suspect at its heart that The Work could also be called Love. But the world we live in has crafted Love to look like so much less than it really is...as if it were something inert that sort of happens and goes away. The work of Real Love has a power, beauty and a permanence that transforms, fills and satisfies. Not only that but it makes us powerful, beautiful and permanent, too.

A beautiful email...

I got an e-mail from Reny Madjarska last night who is handling the social media promotion for Pres Gillham's book, No Mercy.  It was beautiful, so I thought I would share...

People need to know they are significant.
People need to know [their heavenly] Father is close all the time.
People need to know they are loved.
People need to be able to distinguish and defend themselves from the lies of the enemy.

The most beautiful part of Reny's e-mail was the tone. This isn't a minor concern.  It is the cry of her heart.

Did you ever hear the parable about the girl who found an egg and put it in a chicken coop?  The thing is that the little girl didn't know it was an eagles egg, so the eglet was raised with the chickens.  Rather than soaring high in beauty, it pecked and scratched about in the dirt. Rather than giving its beautiful cry, it clucked and cackled. It lived out what it knew and missed who it was designed to be.  The parable gets retold because something inside us knows the story is true.  We love the rags to riches stories because they call to that part of us deep inside that knows there is more to life than what we are experiencing.

The big theme in No Mercy is about learning to receive love.  It chronicles leaving love to chase Significance, being crippled by Competence, and about being lied to an lied to in a continual drone so that you can't believe who you truly are...can't believe that you are truly loved...that you are worthy of love. The book explores the call of religion to concern itself with the insignificant and to not only ignore the heart, but to sometimes kill it. 

My favorite part of Reny's e-mail was her deep passion that people discover who they really are.  I'm fairly certain that Reny is the type of person who would shed tears over Christians settling for a shallow version of love or for people missing out on love altogether. Funny thing is that I've never met Reny in person.  Only digitally.  Hearts like that glow through.  Even when they live all the way in California. Hearts that know love, love back, and they can't settle for anything less than the real and beautiful thing.

Quick note on blogging...

If you are a blogger....you should never EVER start playing with your blog design 30 minutes before you have to leave for work!  Randomcathy.com is in a funky place at the moment.

Thought you might want to see the deer...

This weekend there were deer everywhere.  Many times in people's front lawns foraging.

There were two does standing by the road with three fawns. (I wish you could see the adorable white spots on their backs.)

Deer can be dangerous when driving through the hills where visibility is low.  Lynette's theory on the reason that so many get hit is that the driver reacts.  She says as long as you keep your speed constant and don't change your engine sound, the deer won't bolt across the road.

Most of the deer we saw this weekend were really small.  Like living in Bambi's world for a weekend.

Poor Bethany...

Bethany had her wisdom teeth out today...all four...impacted.  I have photos, but I'm not mean enough to post them. (Smile.)

She is, very puffy.  Eating soft things, sleeping, and going a little stir crazy. 

Luckily, we have tons of stuff on the DVR. Right now, we are watching Bones.  Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains and White Collar are on deck.

After that, we start renting...if she's still awake.

Weekend at Lynette-the-Cowgirls

This weekend I made a road trip to see Lynette-the-Cowgirl.  She lives just outside of a small town in the Texas Hill country.  In fact, this picture is the view from her front porch.

The best part of the weekend is that everything we did was relaxing.  We got pedicures in town, made a trip to a craft shop, rented a movie, ate fresh peaches from her friend's stand and vegetables from her in-laws garden.

We talked....a lot.  Sitting on her front porch in the morning and on the side porch in the evening.

When we went into the craft store we were greeted by a display of yard flamingos on sale--which made both of us burst out laughing after our adventure with the BFF's where we flamingoed the wrong yard.  
Not only was it great to hang out with one of my best friends, but it was also fun to be out of the city. 

Don't get me wrong...I love the city...but there is something energizing about being able to see stars and hear crickets.  About the way the air feels... 

And, it was really cool to see deer everywhere.  Especially the little spotted baby ones!

Things that make you smile

A few months ago Heather-the-Hippie-Chick gave me a little frog sitting in lotus pose as a thank you for helping with her blog.  The little guy sits on my desk next to a bamboo plant and whenever I look over at him, he makes me smile.  I'm pretty sure smiles are the best gift of all. 

Sacred Space

I love the devotions at Sacred Space--a prayer site run by the Irish Jesuits.  I especially liked their intro for this week's prayers...

How can we live with the evil in the world? Jesus answered with the parable of the wheat and the darnel, whose force hits us every day. It is about having patience with the persistence of evil in the world. We may face malicious vandalism, like the enemy who sowed weeds in his neighbour’s field. In their early stages the weeds looked like wheat, and you could not root up weeds without taking some wheat as well. So too some of the evils we face are dressed up to look respectable. We have to fight evil, but we need not give ourselves ulcers if we find that society remains far from perfect. The final judgment lies with God. Lord, you remind me of my impatience when faced with evil in the world. Let me learn to wait for the wheat and the weeds to grow. Otherwise my judgments will likely be too hasty and mistaken. You warn us against the illusions of inquisitions which tried to eliminate sin by laws and bonfires. You do not ask us to coerce people into what we think is the right path. Part of me is impatient to root out evil, like the servants offering to weed out the darnel. You tell me to wait on God’s judgment and trust that the goodness of his seed will prevail over the weeds. May I learn patience. When faced with violent people, I will not let their way of treating me determine my way of treating them.

Let me learn to wait for the wheat and the weeds to grow. Otherwise my judgments will likely be too hasty and mistaken. Amen.

ArtLoveMagic's girlShow

This weekend was ArtLoveMagic's girlShow.  Two nights of all female artists, musicians, poets and craftsmen (craftswomen?). 

I'm finding it hard to capture in words the energy of it all in a blog post. There were two stages going at all times.  The main stage featured female break dancers, a fashion show, bands like RinTinTin. I found myself drawn to the Mokah Lounge--a more intimate venue--which featured singer/songwriters like Southern Karma, Erin Gayden and Jaime Reeves and spoken word artists like Audacious and Maggie Smith. (Maggie Smith performs a piece on the Letter B that I always love hearing!)

It is always interesting to me to discover the work I'm drawn to.  It is almost always high color with motion and hopeful themes.  I purchased this painting by Cori Berg.  Her drawing style is tattoo art on high color backgrounds.

Another artist--Sarah Zamora--was also a favorite. Her series of "girls" in mixed media is a favorite.  (And if I had the budget, I would purchase them all.)  During the show she painted a woman who started dark and in outline surrounded by negative words, but over the course of the night she became bright and beautiful surrounded by words of beauty and hope.  The transformation captured the theme of girlShow which was "Perfect 10" and focused on redefining the term.

I picked up this print of Sarah's--which the photo doesn't do justice.  The painting is on a page from a dictionary where the word "cross" is contained.

I really, really, really wish I could have purchased the original on this one by Michelle Wallace.  When I asked her about it she told me it was inspired by a story her friend told her about contemplative prayer and falling leaves. (It is a really cool experience to be drawn to a painting then find out the story appeals to something inside of you.)

With all of these wonderful pieces, you might think that girlShow was simply about the art, but the real power is about being immersed in all of that creative energy for hours on end.

If you are in Dallas--or might want to plan a trip here next year--schedule it around girlShow.

Quick update

It has been a busy week, and while I will tell you all about girlShow in the next post, I did have to pop in to let you know that this weekend while playing "Bananagrams" with friends, I actually got to work SASSAFRAS into the puzzle.

And here is the photographic evidence to prove it.

Simple Joys | Sounds of Vacation

I think sometimes in our environments we overlook all of the senses outside of the visual.  Scents, textures and sounds are just as important as color, arrangement and flow.

Bethany brought me back a set of wind chimes from her trip to Mexico that I absolutely adore.  The sound of chimes vary in tone and character.  Which is why you should never choose one based on looks...(smile). 

This particular one sounds like vacation--which as it turns out is the very best sound of all to bring home.

Veganism, Date Night, and the Theme for the Year

For context, in my heart I've wanted to be vegan.  I like the idea of it.  It is a Garden-of-Eden sort of idea.  There is "no harm."  Yet I find--especially when I travel--that if I don't get enough whole grains and legume combinations that I need fish or eggs to balance.  (I have a really hard time with milk giving me athsma so that is never in the equation.) And part of me always felt like I'm failing...

Saturday, John and I really needed a date night which for us translates into a real date...romance, conversation...just us without demands from the outside world. It was my night to pick. (Yes we alternate doing things the other wants to do and learn to appreciate what makes us each unique in the process).

So, I was looking up to see if we needed reservations to get into the raw food restaurant here in Dallas and ran across some links I began to explore.  The "Meet Up" group for the Dallas Raw Foodists showed that there was a class in a few hours.  It was from 4:30 to 6:30 which meant it wouldn't conflict with date night.

So we printed directions and went to hang with people we had never met before.
I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was somewhere along the lines of a group of thin, perfect people with glowing skin.  Instead I found a mix of real people at different points in their own personal journeys who had come to learn. 

John said he was surprised to find that Brian (the teacher) looked "like a guy."  Healthy.  After all, John said, "if you were defending a village or waging a war against oppressors of the helpless you wouldn't start the recruit with the raw vegans."

So, Brian-the-Healthy-Guy started teaching.  The class focused on what you do daily--which especially resonated with me since it is Theme for 2010 .    The class mostly covered cleansing (doing things that help your lungs, kidneys, colon and skin shed toxins and waste) but in the teaching Brian told more of a story of natural and indiginous food, water and cleaning products. I was interested in reading his blog this morning about his journey into and out of raw veganism and where he has landed with that.

I love meeting people who have different experiences to me.  Theodore Zeldin said...“Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet they don’t just exchange facts; They transform them, reshape them, draw different conclusions from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards, it creates new cards.”

So here are my new cards:

1) John and I are adjusting some of the things we do daily.
2) I'm test driving letting go of a lot of my chemical laced soaps and lotions in favor of oils like olive and grapeseed.
3) I've reframed on vegan as an ideal and am focused on more 'high-vibration' and 'whole' foods. (Though please don't ask me to eat meat products other than fish.  Eeeew.)  That actually puts me back to where I started my journey with Marilu Henner's book so many years ago:  pescatarian minus the dairy.
4) I'm adding more houseplants to keep the air in my house clean.
5) I am completely ick'ed out by water and am concerned my Brita filter is not doing the trick. (Thanks, Brian.)

Another part of this story is how much I liked Brian and Jessica's home.  The furnishings were very pretty, but simple.  Clean lines.  A mantle full of things you might find on a walk through the woods.  There was no television.  In fact there were limited electrical appliances period.  But my favorite, favorite part, was the two chairs I saw sitting together under the tree in the back yard.   (And no, John is not giving up his big screen to buy chairs.  Smile.)

After the meeting, John and I had date night with lots of new stuff to talk about. I love it that John my athlete-poker-playing-science-fiction loving husband of 23 years is open to walking this journey with me.  And if you are wondering if we ever do this in reverse.  Yes.  He introduced me to Tron yesterday in all of its geeky splendor. (It was actually pretty fantastic, and John explained some of the points that were lost on me.)

Unintended communication

Metal folding chairs are a visual cue that an event is going to be boring. They unintentionally communicate sitting inactively. We associate them with school. Assemblies. Head stuff.

It occurs to me that one of the reasons we have made Christianity a head thing instead of a heart thing is the affordability of metal folding chairs.  They are the visual cue for passivity.  Something in our Christian practice believes that if we could just sit and listen enough, read enough Bible studies, learn enough doctrine then we would be able to do this thing right.

Here's the challenge with this.  When God is a head thing, then it becomes about being right.  We feel if we could just present enough evidence, then people would believe.  It becomes the war of the plastic fishes on the back of a mini-van.  (You've seen the plastic Jesus fish right?  Then you've seen the fish that has legs that says DARWIN?  Then you've seen the plastic fish eating the DARWIN fish?)

Yesterday at a restaurant I picked up a tract.  When I opened it, I saw that it was actually a tract for another religion. Here's the thing.  There was no difference in that tract than the Christian tracts I've read except that it didn't say Jesus.

When we make Christianity a head thing, then it is simply one more idea in a list of other ideas with people trying to shout louder than the others about being right. 

When Christianity is a heart thing, it becomes about love. That was the desciptor that the book of Acts describes as how people knew who the Christians were.  Funny thing is that love is the thing we all so desperately need. The thing that souls are dying for lack of.  Real love engages. 

I asked a man named David Hall once why when you first become a Christian, church is so rich and every lesson seems to produce epiphanies, then as you grow in your faith that happens less and less often.  David quoted the verse where Jesus says, "My bread is to do the work of my Father." 

The deep learning of Christianity comes about in practice.  In taking off all the things that make us special, wrapping a towel around our waist and washing feet.  There is no other way.