things i collect - part two.

memories
photographs
dust on just about every surface of my house...it's something i have a hard time getting around to.
kitchen gadgets - antique ones to add to my kitchen border; new ones to play with
cookbooks
cd's, mainly of friends, independent artists, and classic got-to-own goodies
pens
bags, leaning towards the hippy variety
board games
art supplies for me + my kids
catalogs - cbd, ll bean, pottery barn. when i've collected too many we make collages.
empty water bottles - but i don't mean to. i really should throw them away...
notebooks - we are rife with them. all of us here do a tremendous amount of drawing, writing, and general doodling.
educational placemats - nothing like discussing the nervous system, planetary order, or elmo's favorite colors while enjoying a meal.
credit card applications, which i now rip up and return to the sender at their expense, a tip i learned from the happily determined mary hunt.
chocolate
peace
hope
love
fisher price toys from the seventies - for old times sake.


i'm sure there's more, but you get the idea...

i've been a barista off and on for the last, oh, ten years or so. i've worked in quite a few coffeeshops in several states (i met my husband while employed at one in chicago), most recently helping out some friends who started up a new one in topeka. that was a year and a half ago, and the venture is proving itself to be a worthwhile one...i'm happy to be part of its scenery. to me, the occupation of barista falls between waitress - too business minded; and bartender - too technical...and it would probably be a difficult job to do as a christian. coffeeshops - good ones - have an organic soul, they attract a certain group of people that are earthy, into art, politics, or both; college kids, older single folks that talk to me while i pour their shots, steam their milk. my friends jim and cara would come in frequently in the last weeks before their first baby was born, playing chess, killing time. people reading, writing, talking quietly, eating scones, working on laptops. it's comfortable, a communal living room. and a nice break from my day job...

things i collect - part one.

mmm...

you should collect these, too, if you are able. they're delicious.

lately when i've experienced feelings of excitement over something, interest in something, joy, wonder, a spark of any kind, my thoughts have gone from that feeling to the idea that i want to feel that way about my relationship with God. did he not make me to feel these things? and i'm sure it isn't for the purpose of spending all of it on things of this earth, things in my little circle of concern. i want to know him as He knows himself, know him in His art of creation, His greatness and glory, His sacrificial love for me. i want to be excited about knowing Him, desiring to spend time with Him. Our kids are into these max lucado books right now - you are mine, you are special, and most recently, if i only had a green nose. these stories deal with a wooden puppet living in a town filled with wooden puppets, most of whom spend all their time trying to outdo each other in coolness and belonging via the latest fad. eli, the woodcarver who made them all, lives up a hill outside of the town and is generally feared scornfully by the 'wemmicks'. punchinello, the main character, goes to eli initially to meet him, and then sporadically throughout the other books as he's in need of rescuing...but other than those times is busy getting caught up in the popularity contests at quite a high price to himself every time. as i read these stories to my kids, i am wondering why little punchinello doesn't just spend more time at eli's - he's so much more levelheaded and feeling peace when he's at the woodcarvers shop. the time he wastes in town listening to lost wemmicks he exhibits foolishness and pride and ends up burned, lost and lonely every time. it's a beautiful picture of how we are, it's so simple and straightforward. i want to get off the hamster wheel for good, i want to know it's ok to do that. i want rest in my body and peace in my head. i'm so thankful that that's what He wants for me, too...i just have a lot of trouble remembering this in the thick of daily life.

saw waterdeep and sixpence in wichita last night...wd was wonderful, as usual, funky and fresh again - alive and kicking. it was a bit sad to see them just opening, though...they could've played for hours. sixpence was oddly dark. the sound was full, her vocals pretty...it just seemed as though something a bit awkward was transpiring in the whole thing. maybe it was the contrast with don + co., maybe that the guys in sixpence don't talk or sing - and it was short - they didn't seem to play much longer than their opener had. i've heard great things about their latest release - someone told me that this was the fourth or so night of their tour - getting used to the whole thing again, i guess...it's been awhile. leigh did have a blond braided somewhere around six or seven year old fan right up front by herself, dancing away with stars in her eyes.

misery...i've been in bed for three days with a killer cold. and now my throat is all swollen and sore - looks like i'll be paying a visit to my doc tomorrow. waste of a good half a week, if you ask me. i'm a terrible patient. and of course today in the mail something had to appear like the samaritans purse newsletter - a full color magazine showing picture after full blown picture of skinny, dirty children from the poorest countries on earth clutching brightly wrapped shoeboxes, grinning like mad. we'd helped the boys participate in this project over christmas, and the meaning very nearly got lost in all the other holiday shuffle, shopping, and travel - but here it looked me in the face again, in the midst of my grouchiness over having to have spent some time resting in my warm house and comfortable bed and feeling a little bad - here it was, this reminder of children dying of aids, children living in orphanages with dirt floors and one meal a day, children who were hearing for the first time ever that Jesus loves them very much. and i wasn't amidst the hustle and bustle of anything at the moment to distract me. i looked into their bright eyes, i read their stories, i cried at their innocence and their pain. oh, i wondered - when will i learn to disentangle myself from the preoccupation of self, here and now? God have mercy. *cough*

morning wakes my bleary vision
getting up's a tough decision
stayed up late, but that's my nature
grouchy start the next day's wager
overwhelmed and late already
on my feet i'm barely steady
coffee brewing, cereal poured
warm bed tempts, i can't afford
to give it even one more thought
this is the kind of start i bought
but does it have to spoil the day?
i know it started out that way, but
help me Lord, to overcome
feeling tired, draggy, numb
show your strength despite my weakness
radiate my outer bleakness
grace you show me, kind and true
when even my foolishness you work through.

yesterday was deepening grey and foggy, misty and somewhere between cool and warm - my absolute favorite weather. i need to live in the pacific northwest. but alas, instead of wishing away my morning i started the daunting task of cleaning out my garage and chopped all of my perennials down to barely there. i just had to be outside, it was surreal, it was a grey green gift to my senses from my heavenly Father, who makes all things bright and beautiful, who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and who knows my own heart much better than i ever could. i was just breathing in the comfort, it was a whisper in my ear from my Abba, i could've stayed there for a year. hopefully it is a glimpse of what spring is going to look like in kansas - if so, i can't wait.

having read anne lamott's entire body of work in the last few months, here's my current reads/ to be read asap (read: when i have time) list...
ruthless trust - brennan manning
a womans answer to anger - annie chapman
the way they learn - cynthia ulrich tobias
where is God when it hurts? - philip yancy
the italian cooking encyclopedia
listening to your life - frederick buechner
...and the grinning skim through the current family fun magazine.

i just wish i had the lazy afternoons, the late nights with flashlights time i used to have to read. it takes much more discipline these days...

so last saturday night c + i actually went on a DATE - dinner and a movie, and then we went to one of the topeka coffeeshops we used to work at back in the day for "sam and friends"...sam billen, a few other guys, and chad performing their new songs. sam's new cd is wonderfully soothing, mellow and thoughtful. or it makes me thoughtful anyway. the other acts i mostly talked to sam's girlfriend through, but then chad went up to play the song he's been working on. it's a lot about the deep dark valley that this marriage of ours went through last year, and he's such a wear-life-on-your-sleeve, allofiteventhehardandembarrassingparts kind of guy...it made me feel a bit more exposed than i was comfortable with. but then there was conversation with present multigenerational friends about it, and the transparancy was helpful, and i was so glad that in a lot of ways we are past that time now. i left with less cynism that i had arrived with...and the take home cannoli's from paisanos the next day shared the sweet aroma of rootsy spontanious fellowship left with me.

*new and improved* addy... lisabarker72@hotmail.com . write, it's good for you. write to me, it makes me happy.

the four or so inches of snow that fell on auburn last night had us huddled around the telly, waiting (kansas seriously hoping) to find out if school would be in session today. it turned out that he trudged to the bus stop in boots, mittens, scarf, and hat - but he does have a preplanned four day weekend starting tomorrow :). it reminded me of so many michigan winter mornings, my sis and i huddled by the radio listening to the long monotonous list of school closings due to an overnight snowstorm...as soon as we heard "all livonia public schools" we would shriek with joy and race to cram down something for breakfast while struggling into warm socks, coats, snowpants, gloves, hats, boots, and scarves. then out the door to neighbor friends yards for snow angels, snowball fights, and hot chocolate, or to the neighborhood park for sledding and more snowball fights. if we were lucky, we could get someone's mom or our campus life leader to drive us out to kensington state park for tobogganing down the big hills, ice skating on the lake, and more hot chocolate at the lodge. red cheeked and breathless, laughing and yelling, white snow weighing down branches of evergreen trees, shovels by the side door for clearing our wide sloping driveway - a job we never complained about - sleds and snow forts and the cold silver blades of skates...these are my childhood winter memories.

it doesn't snow like that in kansas, and michigan doesn't even get the amounts it used to...and with the rise of kids on computers, in front of playstations, vcr's, and cable t.v.'s they're just not out playing in it they way we used to, my dad reports. but my recollections are fine ones that always make me smile, and with them I feel the warmth in my stomach not unlike a cup of hot chocolate complete with floating marshmallows in my cold hands after hours of romping in the snow.
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a day at kensington a couple of weeks ago - my sis gina, brother in law mark, stepmom janet, me, kansas, caleb, joshua, jesse, and lucy.

reading through some old 'light 99' posts from the time right after rich mullins died, and came across this quote from carolyn arends.."he was what one writer has called a "living mystery" - he lived in such a way that his life would not make sense if God did not exist."

any stragglers need a quick new years resolution? myself, i'm just floored at the very idea, the beauty of the statement, the possibility that a life could be all that. wow...

i have so much to do today that it's all a blur, as usual...but church was such a warm encouragement yesterday, and God is so noticeably, amazingly faithful that I'm able - today at least - to just do what I can and leave what I can't. which is a major accomplishment for me.

i hate having to deal with html and such. ah well...

i broke my toe a couple of days ago - jammed it up against a lego box that had no room to give between it and the chair it was up against. within the hour after i initially broke the thing, jesse accidentally stepped directly on it, whereupon i let out the second screeching howl of the day. now, though, every time i look at the green blue purple swollen appendage or feel the twinge of pain from it, i think of my friend angie from mops, who over the christmas holidays broke just about every bone on her right side in a freak sleigh riding accident. she was with family, and the horses just spooked and bolted, and she happened to be on the side that was smashed into a tree. not realizing how badly she was hurt, she got up and ran back to the sleigh in total fear that her four year old son had been killed...he was fine, thank God. she has a long recovery ahead, and she is currently in nursing school, so she has half an idea what she'll have to go through to get well. my toe seems a minor inconvienience compared.

ho hmmm...

ok, toying with a new comment system that ultimately made me change my whole template...still trying...

ladeda

hmmm...