spent the better part of today standing in a crowd facing the Monroe school in Topeka, where it was being dedicated as a national historic site. fifty years ago today, the supreme court unanimously decided that it was unamerican and against our nation's constitition to allow segragation in the public schools to continue (legally, at least) in response to several lawsuits filed by families including little seven year old carol brown's father. she was there today to speak (and to introduce the president), along with many other dignitaries and civil rights leaders including the rev. jesse jackson and the rev. fred shuttlesworth, who i could've listened to for another hour at least, with his biblical refrences to the cause of civil rights and his sharply honed wit.

i felt a responsibility to be there, to show support of a cause i firmly believe in. all my life i have been angered by predjudice, injustice, people looking down their noses at other people just because they looked different, were of a different race - just because of the color of their skin. and not only looking down their noses - we cannot forget ugly scars on america's historical landscape like the kkk, lynching, unfair trials, slavery, the list goes on. today i heard about children - children! who chose courage over fear and walked through lines of discrimination, endured ridicule, beatings, poor conditions, unfair accusations - in the name of trying to get an education.

i believe that God is sympathetic to the poor, the downtrodden, the shunned, the humiliated. i believe that he put that fire in me, to some degree..and i was glad to have the opportunity to be among many, many like minded people today.

last night bible study ended early..a rarity since we all love to sit around and talk after the video and prayer time. i had not had a chance to give waterdeep's new live cd a good listen, so i headed out of our small town with it on loud, windows down, the weather intoxicatingly hovering between warm and cool. i was heading to the auburn cemetary, where there is a long road that ends at an entrance to a ranchers field - gravestones on one side, hilly fields ending in one of those glorious kansas sunsets on the other. this time, though, i was in for a suprise. as soon as i drove over the first hill, i was greeted by the sight of a large herd of buffalo. now i had heard about these animals roaming here, and chad claimed to have gotten a far away look at them, but in the almost five years we've lived in these parts they had been just ghosts to me. but here they were, turning their giant brown wooly heads to stare at me, their wide set eyes blinking slowly. i got out of the car just grinning, i turned to look at the low full moon, back to see the blazing sunset, buffalo close enough to touch in the middle. i stayed for awhile, just in awe of the evening, of the suprise, of the magnifigance of these beasts, these relics of the old wild west, right here in my backyard. i grinned again to think of God, looking down at me, having just handed his child a yellow frosted cupcake and a glass of cold milk, and permission to go enjoy them out at the picnic table; having whispered in my ear how close He was, how real, how here. it was hard to pull away...i slowly drove back down that long road, gravestones on one side, remains of a fantastic kansas sunset on the other, and a rather large herd of buffalo in my rearview mirror.

mmm...a five hour run from waterdeep on saturday night - it was good to be there. it's a little sad that it was the "farewell to touring" show, but knowing them, I can't imagine there not being a slam bang kickin' reunion tour oh say, next year...

it was so good also to see friends..the kind of friends you can not see for months, even years - and pick up right where you left off. and of course it was fun to meet some new faces and just be at the new earth. even with the giant realtor 'for sale' sign out front...

another lucy one...i just had to share - she hates when i leave for work (it's rather rare, but i do go in now and then), so today when she saw me tying my shoes and gathering my things she said "Mom! are you going somewhere??" to which i replied, "Yes, honey; to the MOON!!" she pondered this for a moment, then said "well, can you just go to work?"

at the moment lucy's parading around the house, doll in one hand, bell-on-a-stick in the other, singing at the top of her lungs - "and i'm so happy, so very happy, i have the love of Jesus in my heart!!"

i guess all the movies she's been in so far have slipped right under my radar screen, but it's just recently been brought to my attention that judy greer, currently working in hollywood, is the same judy (evans) that i had a ball with in and out of acting classes in high school. i dug out my yearbook and sure enough, there we were, in all our black and white glory, in various poses from A Thurber Carnival. Look for her in 13 going on 30, opening this week. Huh.

i talked to my dad yesterday and discovered that he'd up and sold the farm...the house he bought when i was six months old will be home no more as of the last week in june. it's strange, it's unsettling to find out how tied i can become to things of this earth, as well as how stinking sentimental i get sometimes. i think back to two christmases ago, the last time we visited...the last time i'd walk on the brick red dining room floor, the last time i'd do laundry in the basement among my dad's vast (and well organized) tool collection, the last time i'd tuck my kids in for sleep in the upstairs room my parents had painted pink in 1972 for their baby girls. so many memories there, such a deep sense of belonging all over that property. my dad told me that he'd sold it to a family with three little girls of their own, and that made me smile. as i'm losing my sense of balance in what i can now go back to when i'm in michigan, i'm hoping those little girls will grow up climbing the ancient apple tree in the backyard, swinging their legs under the kitchen counter perched on those high stools, sitting on the smooth front porch among the yews, elbows on knees, chins in palms, contemplating plans for that particular summer day...i hope they love that it's only a two block bike ride to the neighborhood park, that the sloping black driveway is fun to shovel in the winter, that they have a root celler and a laundry chute and back closets in the upstairs bedrooms to explore. i wonder if they will dig up my stash of quarters under my old bedroom window.
i hope, as i am losing this for myself, that it will be a house that becomes a home to them. i hope their parents take really good care of the place. and i hope i can stomach staying in a finished basement of a condo surrounded by displaced memorabilia next time i'm in town...

recovering from spring break - we didn't go anywhere special, just having all three kiddos home all day every day took some getting used to. I'm trying to look on the bright side of the upcoming summer, instead of worrying about what in the world we're going to do all day. the last two days i've spent greasing my rusty politically active arm...an issue having to do with our little town losing the close by bigger town's wonderful library services - our own city council is working against us, and we're in a race to call all the folks we know to get them to call their senators by tomorrow or else...or else we're going to start a PETITION, doggone it! fire and bookworms uniting in little ol kansas...

but the spring trees are blooming, the forsythias are in all their yellow glory, the grass is getting greener with every nighttime blast of nitrogen charged lightning, it's a fine time of year to be living in tornado alley.

oh, and watch yourself. tomorrow's april fools day :)

"treat your mind like a bad neighborhood...don't go there alone"

sound advice if i ever heard it.

life is not always fair and free, life is downright mean spirited sometimes. underneath the current pushy tickertape of the daily news of me, i can sometimes find inspiration, though...today, i would've liked to respond to the developing top story with a three musketeers in one hand and the manuel entitled "how to reconnect with the mother you never knew after a friend of hers unwittingly gets in touch with you and she herself has to write and apologize for intruding into your otherwise probably perfect life" in the other, but it was not to be so. i searched around the edges and came up with a mess of granny smith apples and an uncanny desire to once again try my hand at pastry-making from scratch (enough time lapses between these urges that i forget the heavy flour/pie crust crumb dusting my kitchen ends up with when i venture there)...
what came out was a not so bad homemade apple pie sporting a fabulous crust, and some peace of mind for me. that amy charmichael was right about doing the next thing; it heartens, it empowers to accomplish the small what you can under the looming shadow of what you cannot.

"Could we with ink the ocean fill,
and were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
and every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
would drain the ocean dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
though stretched from sky to sky."

found penciled on a wall in the room of a patient in an insane asylum...i am encouraged in that what we can't see or understand, He does, and can, in perfect clarity. So we can trust him perfectly.

"Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands..."

*************************************
He not only fills in the empty places, he plants fields of wildflowers there.
I am blessed to be His daughter.

there is a calm place in me tonight that used to be filled with anxiety, fear, anger, dread. there is a knowing whose hands i am in, whose will it is for there to be breath in my lungs, oxygen in my blood. there is still a gaping hole where solid trust should be, and it is scary from a distance, but not up close today - i can't feel the emptiness yawning around me like a canyon as i so often have today. to come to a place in the midst of a struggle with another person where you can breathe, where you can put your hand in the hand of Jesus and lean into him, and with wonder - wonder! - ponder what it is that he is doing there, in your desert, in your shadow of yet another fading mirage, what he is up to and how he will see you through; confidence in his love, his perfect father plan letting you feel light inside...this is nothing short of miraculous. but that is the God who claims us, yes? a God of miracles, within and without us, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

this weekend we went to an 80's party (can you think of a greater way to spend a friday night ? ;) ...

...and i went with a friend to a watercolor workshop in kansas city.



chad's off to see the billions in lawrence tonight..no pics, but you can still catch the show if you read this not too long after i post it :)

..as it rained, it froze; and it rained a lot. we're living in iceland, a wonderland where everything the sun touches glimmers and shines, and the icicles jutting down from stop signs, streetlights, and fence posts alike are longer than i ever remember seeing in kansas. now if it only weren't so darned COLD...

Hmm... shows up #17 on an MSN search for "calories burned playing guitar". Really, I didn't blog those words in that order...I don't even PLAY guitar. HA!

so i've managed to beat that nasty flu bug once more...no fun, for sure, but it's nice to come out on the other side in one piece (which, as some of you probably know, absolutely does not seem possible as you're navigating the rolling waves that have replaced the floor between your bed and your bathroom)...

Anyway...c was a trooper and took care of just about everything except laundry for three whole days - kudos aplenty to him. i watched way too much bad tv (do we really have nothing else to debate about in this country besides whether michael jackson really, after all, IS a child molester ???), lost a pound or two, and actually got a sore ear from having it pressed to my pillow for so long.

But despite this and other little trials and yukky stuff I've had to deal with lately, I am thankful. To God. For my overall health, for my family and friends, for warm socks and
good books and an upcoming all day watercolor class. I'm working on that resolution to just try and see the glass as half full once in a while, and I'm finding it rather...settling.

lots of frigid temperatures and ice, no snow, though...the residue over this kansas land is a grimy chalky mess - not too pretty or inspiring. we're shivering with our shoulders up to our ears, we're drying out in the forced hot blowing air..we don't wash the streaks of salt off of the car because we know that in this weather and trek from rural landscape to town cleaning it is an exercise in futility - it will not stick. the festivities are a memory, spring is a distant hope, she rides a slow train towards us through fair fields blooming brightly with flowers, with tree buds, with green life...her hands are in her lap and she is dozing, the soft clacking rhythm her lullaby, far far from here. i clean out closets, i take the kids to the library, i throw an extra blanket on everybody at night, i wait for it to be civil outdoors. i finished marcia ford's 'memoir of a misfit' - lovely book, i've already lent it out; and now i'm reading 'walk on - the spiritual journey of u2' by steve stockman, along with the ezzo's 'preteen wise - parenting your child from eight to twelve years' because it's been brought to my attention by this comment and that awareness lately that my oldest son is indeed exiting little kid-dom and what next? here's to a shot at preparedness...

happy january, that no mans land month.

enjoying my Christmas present to me - natalie merchant's 'the house carpenter's daughter'. wonderful stuff, etheral and gritty at the same time, echos of history sung clearly, folk in its glory. i recommend you give it a listen...

my brand new niece lies in an incubator across the atlantic from me, weighing not quite four pounds, in a hospital forty five minutes away from her mom, papa, and big brothers. i need to be there, but i just don't think i'll get my christmas wish this year. if you come here and you're the praying sort, you sure can pray that little hannah marie will grow and stay healthy and get to go home soon...