i'm going to try out a new blog, first post about new stuff, quite a couple of months.

check it out, i'll try posting there from now on so my friends can comment even if they aren't on all my dorky social-networking sites.

ghostridethewhip!

link love is always appreciated, as are comments and help. make sure i didn't miss your blog on the blogroll, too!

Andrea and Kelly are really inspiring to me. I prefer in person, but also through the award-winning blog Punk Rock Mommy. These two friends have a special parking space in my heart. I love that hanging with them, I always know that they are going to listen as much as they are able. They are definitely going to shoot me straight with what they think, even if I don't want to hear it. The special thing is, I can hear the truth from them because they speak it in love.

The truth for me right now is, I am not going to be able to have too many more of those truth-in-love moments with one of my friends. She's been living with Inflammatory Breast Cancer for the past year and change, and the experts think that it's about time her body got a break. I'm soaking her in while I can, though, and I'm grateful to know and love Kelly and the rest of the family.

I'm glad that I've written down a lot of nuggets of wisdom that Andrea has said, mostly in passing when we get together to pray or eat tacos. Most of them are pretty funny or just plain old profound. One thing she told me the other day was that she has spent the past year laughing. I'd say not laughing because everything is silly, as a defense mechanism, immaturity, or lack of understanding the gravity of her situation.

We laugh together, because it's like she says..."happiness doesn't come from us getting what we want, it comes from God working in us."

Work on, God.

There are a lot of ideas for how to heal a sprained ankle, or a similar condition.  The one that I like is alternating cold compress and warm compress, letting the injury "air out" in between.

I think my life is a little bit sprained this season, and the past couple weeks have had a lot of that hot & cold flow.  Last week, for instance...

Great meetings on Sunday, productive day on Monday.  Hung with the "Javs" and had a great time, refining our plan for a little first floor house improvement among other things.  Tues and Wed I went to the hermitages that I like so much-even got "walked in on" by one of the nuns, a first for me.  Back with the kids and then band practice when they were sleeping.  Thursday I tried to make the most of a workweek until about 8pm and got back home in time for my cell meeting.  Friday morning we left for Pittsburgh to see BB, Andy & Zaida which was fantastic.  Getting back Sunday in time to get ready for the Public Meetings-skipping a bit to fast the fact that it was Fathers' Day & Lily's 4th birthday.

Some of those felt like cool compress:  they were refreshing and reduced whatever swelling I felt.  They had an inward direction, trying to make more pathways for God to get in.  

Some of them felt like the heat...refreshing in their own way, getting the blood flowing again in this more outward kind of sharing.

I like hot and the cold and passing through them, even different degrees of both.  It's cleansing, but don't forget to air it out in between.


Swelling, green courage
Seasonally extending
Beyond her borders

I've been trying to keep up with my daily dose of Brennan Manning since my friend Kim gave me a copy of The Ragamuffin Gospel:  Good News for the Bedraggled, Burnt Out, and Beat Up.
Today I read an insight of his that casts some light on what I think a lot of us are working through this season:  trying to do enough, or the other side-feeling bad about not trying enough.

"American spirituality still seems to start with self, not with God.  Personal responsibility replaces personal response...The emphasis is always on what I do rather than on what God is doing in my life.  In this macho approach God is reduced to a benign old spectator on the sidelines...We become convinced that we can do a pretty good job of following Jesus if we just, once and for all, make up our minds and really buckle down to do it."

How freeing it is, indeed, to not put off letting Jesus work until we have it all put together.  I can think of a million reasons why I'm not firing on all cylinders right now-and if I can only___________ than I'll get right with Jesus.

We can almost instinctively talk about our debt, having small kids, not kicking our bad habits, our living situation, our poor diet, or lack of exercise as if they are God's major barriers-not just our struggles or limitations.  Let's own the limitations as ours (not God's), and let our redemption come from Christ (not us).

Jesus works beyond circumstance.  If you're having a hard time right now, that's okay.  We all do, we're not there yet.  Rather than overly dwelling on limitations we can own them/admit them, let Jesus in, and follow him on to new life.

I think Christ has a lot to say about it beyond our circumstance/need/limitations/sin/brokenness/struggle.  How are you responding to what Jesus is doing  in you?  How are you responding to what Jesus is doing in your cell?  How are we responding to what Jesus is doing in the megalopolis? 

I was hanging out and praying with a good friend of mine the other day.  Among other things, we were talking about hope-specifically in the face of adversity.
She said something that stuck with me, something to the effect of this:

Hope isn't holding on to the notion that you're going to get what you want.  Hope is living in the reality that God is alive and doing great things despite circumstance. 

That's where I want to live, too.

One of my favorite fourteen year olds is joining us over at The Sieve and the Sand to share poetry.  I just learned that he wrote when I read the post over at Punk Rock Mommy.  Awesome.

Here is his first entry-original post here if you want to leave him some comment love.

Sudden Revelation
by Tucker Collins

Awesome night at Grover Cleveland Elementary, Vicki's school at 19th & Erie.  It was the first of two evenings to celebrate the first annual International Night.  There was kids in bands, choir, acting in plays they wrote, reading about ancient Egypt, global warming, the crisis in Sudan, and it was all a fund raiser for an even more under-resourced school in Tanzania.

Jay's west african drumming class was there to play a few times (as the "Fishtown Drummers".  haha!  i know.) and it was a blast.  It starts at 6pm on Wed night if you want to go. 

These kids are so fun.  Oh man.  A couple of them were telling my brother that he didn't know how to dance (even when he showed him his best moves-like the "push up" and "the radiator").  They showed him a thing or two but didn't want to go all out. 

 ps-by the way, I was right.  Grover wasn't really his first name.  It was Stephen.

Got tickets for Martha's "trecade" birthday trip to Cirque du Soleil today, watched this 5 part documentary on the most brutal black metal band (Gorgoroth).

awesome wedding season this month.  whew.

then there is my favorite band from Copenhagen, ever, coming to Phila next week.  Below is the video from Efterklang's new single, "Caravan" (sweeter res quicktime here.)

Sometimes Nature laughs
With us, sometimes it's because
We are so silly

It's been a while since I really pondered money, particularly the $1 bill. Joel and I had an interesting conversation about money and the Kingdom of God, and when it's appropriate or not to use or accept it.

Food for thought:
We take a lot for granted. Including how we navigate what belongs to empire and what belongs to God.

I echo the question of our Lord, who's image and inscription is on it?

Anyone know what ANNUIT COEPTIS means? How about novus ordo seclorum? How about MDCCLXXVI? (w/o searching the web, of course).

creepy.

Have I been so busy that I don't take time to post on here?  Have social networking sites lost their charm (besides scrabulous, c'mon)?  

I looked back at old posts a couple weeks ago and see months where I posted every day.  Where did I get the energy?  

I'll tell you what, though.  These next few months are going to be exciting.  Between getting our wonderful new directors rolling, Rod finally leaving for his sabbatical, buying this old grocery store to move circle thrift and rehab our current site, kilimanjaro catching some momentum, the Phillies, going to Toronto in June, 3 weddings over the next 3 weeks (and like 10 this year!!!  whoo hoo!!)...I'd say there's enough going on to keep my interest.  


Wind flinging water
Sideways and arm-like branches
Wave goodbye to Spring.