Vacation Is Fantastic!!!!

I love being on vacation.  We are staying in a beautiful place, I'm surrounded by my best friends, and the kids are all still alive.  We are not going to even consider heading over to DisneyWorld before Monday in hopes that the lines won't be as long on a weekday.  So for the next two days we are going to be forced to hang out next to a gorgeous pool and sip drinks from coconut shells with little umbrellas. 

Wanna see the website for our resort?  It's better than the pictures.  I'm so thrilled that I'm being goobery over the whole deal.  Maureen and Kate are staying in another resort nearby and we have guest privileges to the facilities of two more because of a reciprocal ownership deal.  We could have a fabulous vacation if we never did anything other than the resort stuff.  So much to do, so little time, and so much inclination to sleep by the pool ...

Beach baby ~

I love the beach.  The first day we hit the sand at Santa Rosa Island there was a storm across the water.  We let the kids play in the sand and I watched the lightning over the waves.  We were close enough to see the rain, and far enough away to see the full roll of the clouds over the waves.  Hot sand, salt, the pounding rhythm of the sea ~ it's hypnotic.  I can understand how it is that a person could choose to walk into the surf and meet eternity in the embrace of the ocean.

So far no one is burned, thanks to Fugitive's constant vigilance and her trigger spray sunscreen bottle.  I'll be lucky to come home any less pasty white than I arrived.  

Tucker especially loves the beach.  We have to keep an especially close eye on him because he has no fear, no caution.  He dives in and trusts the waves to carry him to wherever ~ I've lost count of how many times I've had to chase him down the beach and drag him back up to where the rest of us are.  After he came out of the waves the other day he said, "Momi, taste me!"  I declined.  But asked him what he tasted like ~ "Mom, I taste just like chicken!"  He's my baby!

Have a great weekend. 
   

Road Ready

Well, I've learned something else over the past couple of years.  I've learned how to pack.  When I flew to visit my friend Mary in Virginia almost two years ago, it took three suitcases and a carry on to house all my stuff.  Today, I have all my things for two weeks neatly packed in one - yes, that's right ONE bag.  I've quit counting the number of weeks I've been on the road between family crises, funerals and other travel, but I know it's been in the realm of months.  Every trip finds me deciding that there's one less thing that I want to have to carry into and out of every stop. 

Tim has been burning music to CD's in preparation for the long drive to Pensacola and he's found a piece that I'm enjoying.  Although I've played it a half dozen times today so he may be tired of it before we hit the road.  It's the Junior Brown Pipeline Surf Medley.  I hadn't thought of Junior Borwn in years, but I'm liking this quite a bit.  Hey - someone tell me the name of that Edie Brickell song that I like!  You know that da da da da da da da da da da da da da da daaaa  da song.  It's been at the back of my mind all morning and I can't remember the name of it - it's driving me nuts.

I have a few things to read, I picked up the first of the Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth series and the first of Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars books.  In addition I have a couple Jennifer Crusie books and one rather impressive volume of philosophy that will easily block the sun's rays so I can nap on the beach. 

I've packed my swimsuit, my sunscreen and I have freshly shaved legs, so now all I'm waiting for is the clock to say it's time to hit the road.  Tim is taking his laptop and tells me that I should be able to check in from time to time to see what you guys are up to - but if for some reason you don't see or hear from me over the next two weeks - just assume that I'm up to my ears in family fun.

Have a great June!

Some Things Never Change, And Some Things Do

Well, I'm back on it again.  Approaching my 2 year Xangaversary (hold off the congratulations I don't hit the mark for another week) I'm thinking about the ways I've changed over the past two years.  When I began writing here, I saw this as a forum for practicing expression and my hope was that somehow I'd find my own voice.  I'm not sure why it is that I thought I didn't have a voice, but I was pretty sure that there was nothing unique, or even especially interesting about my views and my life. 

Over the past two years I've gained both confidence and humility (I believe).  Its a funny thing about thinking that I might have humility, as soon as I say it I think, hey, that's cool, and I start to take pride in the acomplishment.  The thing that makes me think perhaps I'm on that path is that I've learned over and over and over that even when I think I know what I'm talking about there is always another view from which I can learn.  But I've discovered that the fact that there is more to know doesn't mean that my original views were necessarily wrong.  I suppose what I've really learned is to understand and appreciate the finitude of my individual humanity while simultaneously taking delight in the infinite myriad of experience that corporate humanity encompasses.  I'm enriched by knowing you all, and I'm diminished when I forget how very much more we are together than any one of us can be apart. 

At the same time that I've learned so much about my need for other people, I've learned to appreciate my own contribution and to consider it valueable.  There are a few people I've met through Xanga who have become close personal friends.  Many more of you who are acquaintances I enjoy spending my time with (even if its cyber chat time).  I have been privileged to pray with you, to laugh with you and to cry with you. It's surprising to me that some of you have trusted me with your hopes and fears, that you have asked my opinion.  I'm honored that you have engaged with me in dialogue about the most important questions we could ask.

After two years, I recognize that in many ways, I'm a different person than the woman who first logged on to Xanga and began keeping a weblog.  But I'm not so far removed from her that I can say I've lost touch with her hopes and fears, dreams and desires.  Today I'm listening to Susan Ashton, and I love the way she expresses this give and take of relationship:

This is how it seems to me,
  life is only therapy
  real expensive and no guarantee
So I lie here on the couch
  with my heart hanging out
  frozen solid with fear, like a rock in the ground

But you move me
   you give me courage I didn't know I had
You move me
   I can't go with you and stay where I am
   so you move me.

Here is how love was to me
   I could look and not see
   going through the emotions, not knowing what they mean
And it scares me so much
   that I just wouldn't budge
   I would have stayed there forever if not for your touch.

Oh, you move me
   Out of myself and into the fire
You move me
   I'm burning with love and with hope and desire
How you move me

You go whistling in the dark
   making light of it
And I follow with my heart
   laughing all the way
Because you move me.

You get me dancing and you make me sing
Now I'm taking delight in every little thing
Because you move me.

Thank you!

Daughter of Grace ~

A group of theologians held a symposium at Oxford to discuss world religions.  One session was devoted to the attempt to isolate just exactly what element was unique to Christianity.  Other religions claim incarnation, revealed scripture, prophecy, a personal God and so the debate continued.  C. S. Lewis wandered in as they were in the midst of the question and asked what was on the table.  After they explained he said, "Oh, that's simple ~ it's grace."  Then he strolled back out leaving them open-mouthed. 

Grace may be the defining characteristic of Christianity, but I have found few Christians would say they are walking in grace.  It's easy to understand, it's the hardest thing in the world to incorporate grace into life.  We resist extending grace to each other.  Sometimes I think that we are worried that if people really understood grace they would take it as license to follow whatever impulse arose.  But I find the opposite to be true.  A verse in Paul's letter to the Romans ends, "...the kindness of God leads you to repentance."  That word repentance is a stumbling block for a lot of us.  When I see it I think of the weird old guy on the corner shouting "Repent for the end is near!"  Generally, I take it that anyone who is encouraging me to repent is asking for me to feel remorse, to wallow in self-loathing or to focus on regret for past action. 

Repentance isn't about the past, it's about the future.  Repentance is the action of turning to a new thing, rising to a new level, opening to a new experience.  I can repent of anything.  I can repent the fact that I regularly make sure dinner is on the table at 6:00 pm by letting the guys fix their own dinner.  Repentance is not feeling, it's action.  The longer I walk in relationship with God, the more I realize that He isn't nearly as concerned with how I feel as with what I do.  My feelings are subject to rapid shifts and are influenced by my hormones, my allergies, and my dinner.  The thing that God looks at closely is what I do in spite of how I feel.  I'm not going to say that there is anything inherently wrong with feeling regret, but I fear that all too often we are content to feel the feeling and think that we've satisfied the need to repent. 

I can't think of anything more likely to motivate me to try harder, to be softer, or to let go of my defensiveness than the awareness of unconditional love - grace.  I'm a total sucker for positive reinforcement.  If Tim walks in and says, "Wow!  You really worked hard today.  This place looks great."  I have never once responded, "Oh, but look at that little smudge on the window, I just feel awful about not getting that off."  On the other hand, if he walks in and says, "The place looks great except for that smudge ..."  Well, lets just say it doesn't go well from there. 

Somehow we've gotten the impression that walking with God is like trying to please the person who notices every little flaw, every mistake, and every stray thought.  Even if we marshal that monumental will to try and live that way, soon our spirit is sapped of all joy and we are reduced to grim determination.  I've known my share of the grimly determined, and frankly, they are not my favorite people to have around.  Not only do they focus on all their short-comings, but they seem especially sensitive to my own. 

On the other hand, I've been privileged to know a few people who were filled with grace.  These people practice kindness toward themselves and understanding toward the people around them.  They don't say, "You missed a spot here."  If they even see the spot, they never mention it. 

I have recently discovered the writings of Annie Dillard.  She has some marvelous things to say but I found one passage that has haunted me: 

     "My back rests on a steep bank under the sycamore; before me shines the creek - the creek which is about all the light I can stand - and beyond it rises the other bank, also steep, and planted in trees.
     I have never understood why so many mystics of all creeds experience the presence of God on mountaintops.  Aren't they afraid of being blown away?  God said to Moses on Sinai that even the priests, who have access to the Lord, must hallow themselves, for fear that the Lord may break out against them.  This is the fear.  It often feels best to lie low, inconspicuous instead of waving your spirit around from high places like a lightning rod.  For if God is in one sense the igniter, a fireball that spins over the ground of continents, God is also in another sense the destroyer, lightning, blind power, impartial as the atmosphere.  Or God is one "G."  You get a comforting sense, in a curved hollow place, of being vulnerable only to a relatively narrow column of God as air."

from, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

That's a powerful image, but it is completely devoid of grace.  The mystic isn't attracted to the mountaintop by some masochistic need to be destroyed but by the power of a grace so dynamic that it is beyond destruction.  Grace changes people.  The person that was on the trip up the mountain is a different person going down the other side.  It is true that in a sense the person who was has been destroyed.  But to focus on the destruction is to miss the glory and the wonder of the transformation.  It is to weep for the caterpillar's loss of form when it emerges from its chrysalis a new creature.

Grace makes you repent.  Grace draws you to a new place and a new understanding.  Annie Dillard found comfort in the small curved hollow at the foot of a sycamore.  God's grace holds you in the curved hollow of His hand. 

Can you stand to read through another quote?  This is part of the lyric to the song I'm so in love with these days:

She spent half her life working hard to be
someone you had to admire
Met the expectations and added something of her own
So proud of all that she had done
(Where was the glory?)
So proud of all that she had not done...
'Til she knelt beneath a wall that will could never scale
There she found the end of herself
Heard her own voice crying for help
And she was

Carried in the arms of love and mercy
Breathing in a second wind
Shining with the light of each new morning
Looking into hope again
Unable to take another step
Finally ready to begin
Born for a second time in a brand new place
Daughter of Grace

We must all depend on grace
Especially me.

You are Ephesians.

Which book of the Bible are you?
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Okay, this is funny for a couple of reasons. I've just had three real life conversations in which it came out that 1) I've made some whopper mistakes.  2) I'm non-traditional to the max.  3)  I know exactly how much Grace I need  - every bit I can get. 

And on my way home yesterday, I listened to the Twila Paris "True North" Cd on which my favorite song, the one I can really identify with is called "Daughter of Grace." I've been trying to decide if I was going to blog a few thoughts on Grace then I found this quiz.

Hi Honey - I'm Home!

The boys and I rolled in tonight after having spent eleven hours in the car.  My sister graciously purchased golf clubs for them to amuse themselves while we were in Arkansas.  Can you guess what's coming?  I'm pretty sure it was an accident, and the knot that Tucker put on the side of my head SHOULD go down before we leave for Florida next week ...

Everytime I get together with my extended family, I'm impressed all over again with what an incredibly cool group of people they are.  Hey, I'm convinced that it isn't bragging if its the truth.  We  have people from every conceivable walk of life who come together and enjoy each other.  I didn't realize growing up how much I learned from them but as an adult I'm continually amazed by my good fortune.

It's no secret that I'm a Christian.  What I may not have talked about so often is the fact that my extended family includes ordained ministers from five different denominations.  We don't agree but we love to talk about religion.  (Have you noticed that in general, a Christian and a Non-Christian can get along better than two Christians of differeing denomination?  Does anyone else think that's odd/funny/sad?)

I learned compassion for the gay community facing AIDS from my cousin who "came out" to us back in the 80's.  He's such an incredibly cool guy that I think the only thing anyone said was that it was a shame it didn't look like Richard would be having children to carry on his legacy with the next generation. 

Various members of the family have battled with disease, addiction, and the challenge of divorce.  I have one (older than me by about 20 years) cousin who married four times.  Every time he divorced, he kept all the kids - even the ones that weren't his biological children.  I lost count a while back of how many kids he raised, but it was a bunch.  I'm not surprised that the kids would choose to stay with him, he's just flat out cool.  I'm almost 40 (June 18 - send presents) and I'd still like to be adopted by him. 

Some of the family are university professors, and some are unskilled labor.  Some are well off financially, and others are not.  It's amazing really how very little we have in common when I go hunting for that bottom-line life circumstance that could connect us.  Because we've got a couple family members who are "honorary," I can't even say that we are bound by blood.  The ties that hold us together are intangible. 

I tried to take photos of my parent's backyard to give you the flavor of what it's been like, but none of them really did it justice - I don't have a wide-enough-angle lens.  Just imagine a large lot (I think it's about five acres, but don't quote me on that.)  In the backyard are parked 15 vehicles, and three campers.  On Tuesday night over 40 people slept there.  Another 15 or so decided the insanity level was just too high so they went to a hotel, but they were back Wednesday morning for breakfast.  Most of them left yesterday but there was still a decent sized crowd to wave goodbye today. 

This morning before I left, my brother said, "Hey Terri, how 'bout you make me a Western omelet, please, please, please ..."  Before I was finished I think I made an even dozen omelets to order.  All the time I was cooking my sisters were in the kitchen with me taking SONG requests.  Yes, I think if someone had a video camera it would have been a hoot to record the sights and sounds of me making all those breakfasts while we were singing in three part harmony. 

I hate that it takes a tragedy to pull us all in from the four corners of the globe. 

Causing Problems

You know, when you drive up to the house and you see people start moving the breakable objects, it's both a good and bad thing.  I mean no one wants to think that they are a rolling disaster waiting to happen, but at least I know that when the storm hits, the damage will be minimized. 

I arrived in Arkansas about 5:30 yesterday afternoon.  It was a long, long, long drive that was made bearable by the intervention of an angel, but that's a story for another day.  My aunts and uncles came out to meet me.  Many of them looking older and weaker than I remember.  Aunt Oleta, Grandma's baby sister, looks and sounds so much like Grandma Lillie these days that its a shock.  But it's good to see them.

One thing you should know is that I have two sisters.  Fugitive and Sam (littleredtahbo on Xanga.)  When we were children, we attracted quite a bit of attention for our appearance.  See I the oldest had dark hair, almost black.  Sam had firey red hair.  And Fugitive was an ash blonde.  Many of our relatives kept us straight by the color of our hair.  But we have all grown and aged, and things change.  Hair color changes.  Sometimes by nature and sometimes by design.  These days, Fugitive's hair is darkened almost to the rich dark brown that is my natural color.  Sam's has been lightened to verge on blonde.  And I am now the fiery red-head. 

I don't know why it is that it's easier to keep the others straight, but apparently my red hair has thrown everyone off balance.  There were takes and double takes, people keep calling me Sam, asking me if I've been out in the sun that much, and the kids want to touch my hair.  It's just hair color. 

Or maybe it's not.  Maybe it's something more.  My mom has told the story all my life of expecting that I would be born a red-head to match her.  When the nurse showed her that bundle of blankets with a thick shock of black hair out the top, she was convinced that they'd brought her the wrong baby.  For nine months she'd visualized her first-born being a carbon copy of her wild Irish looks, and well, I didn't fit the mental image.

Mom and I have never had the easiest of relationships.  She has demanded more of me, and shown me less praise than she's offered the others.  I'm not just saying this because it's my perception, it's the way that she descrobes our relationship.  I've always felt that I needed to do one more thing, make one more 'A', have one more baby, clean my house one more time to win her approval.  I'm almost forty years old.  (June 18 - send presents)  It would seem that I could reach a level of peace with my mother, something that would make me comfortable standing before her knowing that she knows at a glance tha I haven't lost that five pounds that I've been struggling to shed.  As soon as I walk through her door, I'm a little girl wanting a hug from my Mommy and wondering what I need to fix to be good enough for her to just hug me instead of sending me to wash my face. 

 This time things are off with the family.  My hair, now the color of my mother's in her younger days, has moved the ground beneath their feet.  I wonder if my mom sees now that little girl that she expected to see when I was born, if she finally feels as though I'm her child.

While the adults were standing around talking my children were not idle.  After a day of relative peace and quiet, working puzzles, reading, napping, plotting exactly where we were on the big map ~ they had energy to spare.  Unfotunately, they spared no tomato.  Daddy has a small garden with a couple dozen prized tomato plants all loaded with hard green fruit.  I should say the were loaded.  Tucker picked every tomato from the vines within the first five minutes we were here.  I'm sure that will be a funny story some day soon.  Maybe as soon as lunch time today when my aunts have promised that they will fry them.  Fried green tomatoes around a huge dining table with everyone trying to figure out how we fit together without Grandma at the center. 

Some things never change, and some things do.

What Manner of Evil!

I woke up this morning with a Shania Twain song in my head.  Not just any song, that da da da da da feel like a woman song.  Some days life is just rough.  The boys and I are on the road today, so I won't be visiting my Xanga friends.  I hope you'll think of us and send prayers for a safe journey in our direction.  Its 12 hours from Salem, Indiana to Malvern, Arkansas.  I'll be staying with Fugitive for the next several days and I'll be certain to pass on your hellos to her. 

See you when I get back.