A Physical Friday Five

This week's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five asks us "about you and your beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit":

1. What was your favorite sport or outdoor activity as a child?
I was a great hiker through our farm fields. And -- believe it or not -- I enjoyed mowing the lawn.

2. P.E. class--heaven or the other place?
Definitely the other place. Back in the 60's and 70's, PE class had nothing to do with inculcating a personal health regimen or even awxappreciation of one's physicality. Naw -- it was all about burning off kids' excess energy between academic classes and, later on in middle and high school, identifying elite athletes for school teams; oh, and following a state reg. I'd like to think that things have changed, but I'm told that at least in my locality PE is the same-ol', same-ol', only with perhaps even less student enthusiasm.

3. What is your favorite form of exercise now?
I enjoy walking. I enjoy gardening, which can provide a pretty good non-aerobic workout. And, all appearances to the contrary, I do enjoy going to the gym and working on the machines. (Our best intentions to this fell by the wayside when our lives started getting busy again in the mid-winter, and I frankly don't know when we'll be able to start up again.)

4. Do you like to work out solo or with a partner?
I have to say, I enjoy walking alone, which is like a moving meditation for me -- and that way I only have to worry about my own pace. I enjoy working the gym machines with Fellow Traveler so we can talk while we exercise, and for the friendly competition.

5. Inside or outside?
Walking outside; everything else inside.

My own bonus question: A type of exercise I'd like to take up but haven't yet: Tai chi. I love watching tai chi practitioners doing their thing. Sadly, the last time I attempted this discipline -- using a DVD designed for older adults, I might add -- the instructor went too fast for me. Which tells you something about my ability to move easily in space.

Fashionista Friday Five

Image is everything in this week's RevGalBlogPal's Friday Five:


1. Are you a hoarder, or are you good at sorting and clearing?
Definitely the former. It was just this spring that I let go of my 20-year-old collection of paisley rayon work skirts. Because you just never know when one might come in handy...

2. What is the oddest garment you possess and why?
I have a Lost and Found souvenir T-shirt, purchased at our church, that features a chalice and the question "Sup?" When I wear it in public I get looks.

3. Do you have a favourite look/ colour?
For casual dress, I like L.L. Bean preppy. Well...if I don't have to be in public I like my flannel lounge pants and a T- or sweatshirt on top. If I am in public -- L.L. Beany. For more formal wear I like classic/tweedy. If I really have to put on glad rags...for some reason I'm fond of the drop-waisted styles of the 'Teens and Twenties, but since people who design clothes don't seem to share my enthusiasm I'll settle for something tailored looking.

4. Thrift/ Charity shops, love them or hate them?
I love to donate stuff to them. Shopping at them not so much. They never have my size, for one thing, and the whole foreign DNA/unknown history aspect makes me a little hesitant to purchase anything even in a well-kept store...which many around here are not.

5. Money is no object, what one item would you buy?
I would buy a classic, timelessly designed tweed jacket that really, really fit well.

Straight Outta Compline

Word up, my fellow liturgicals:

Tales of the Lovelorn; Or Christians Behaving Badly

Yesterday afternoon a friend of ours who's a gifted carpenter came by, vehicle loaded with an impressive array of power tools, to help us in our ongoing garage renovations -- to finish a window and doorways, to cut down a workbench to a reasonable height.

Our friend has just gotten out of a disastrous relationship -- controlling behavior, passive aggression, belittling/patronizing, lying and, it turns out, infidelity.

"I just want to find someone nice," our friend said, sadly. "Why is that so hard?"

Making things worse was the other party's wearing of religion on her sleeve: Her sending her kids to parochial schools; two previous relationships sanctified in a church setting; her disapproval of our friend for "not wanting to talk about faith stuff."

"I have a whole new perspective on the kind of people who go to church," our friend muttered.

Ouch.

This type of behavior -- in the lesbian community and in the Christian community alike -- disheartens me. I hate the idea that someone who is not a part of the faith community can be hurt so badly by a fruitcake Christian; someone who doesn't get the idea that, as Christians, our relationships need to be grounded in mutual, self-giving respect and love. I also hate the idea of involving minor children -- and they will be involved, no matter what school they go to or how many weekends they're sent to the non-custodial parent or how platonic their parent attempts to paint her or his latest love interest -- in serial relationships.

Yes, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. Yes, church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints. No, we don't always live up to our reputations as followers of Christ. No, we don't always treat other people, including our loved ones, the way we wish to be treated. But you know what? First we need to get honest about that, and then we make an effort to change the behaviors we know hurt other people and keep us from our own potential as persons who help mend the broken places in the world. We make ourselves accountable to something other than our own inclinations at any given moment.

It seems to me, in my currently peevish frame of mind, that 12-Step programs seem to do a better job at this than most churches. But even then, "First you need to admit that you have a problem."

If You Knew Gertie Like We Know Gertie...

As usual, we took Gertie to church yesterday -- Gertie loves church, especially because it means at least one romp at the nearby township park -- and, as usual, when the church kids came around the Jeep to say hello, Gertie cowered in a far corner.

Last week, when I took her to the church office with me for the day, it was the same thing; when the pastor dropped in for a chat, and when one of our friends who'd noticed our vehicle in the parking lot stopped in to see what was up (this being a very small town), Gertie retreated behind my chair, and no amount of cajoling could get her to emerge from the corner.

One of the reasons I love Gertie so much is that she reminds me of me. Being around adults all the time as a small child, not having to endure the rough-and-tumble of siblings, I entered kindergarten as a precocious, confident and even cocky kid ready to take on the world. But my lack of peer-to-peer social skills painted a metaphorical target on my back; within months, thanks to an assortment of class and schoolbus bullies and indifferent school employees, I was transformed into a pathologically shy, timid child for whom every day of school was an endurance test of mocking, teasing, lunch-money-extortion and exclusion. I fell ill with pneumonia three times during that first year of school, and looking back I'm sure that at least part of that was due to the effects of stress and unhappiness on my already vulnerable immune system.

We don't know about Gertie's early life; we only know that when we found her she was living in a pathetic makeshift rural "animal rescue" amid at least a dozen large, snarling pitbull mixes on chains. Our first vision of her was as a puppy darting between pens of vicious dogs many times her size. I'm sure that those formative months imprinted on her puppy brain the idea that the world can be a very dangerous, hostile place where, in the end, you're on your own.

So I understand Gertie's timidity around people. I really do.

But I wish people could see her when she's happy and relaxed, with her mamas and Mollie the cat and selected dog friends. She is funny and charming -- yesterday, when her sheltie pal Daphne came by for a visit, she took her on a tour of the place like any proud homeowner. ("Now, this is our patio...here are my toys...here's the living room, and my pillows...here's where mamas keep the cookies...") She is whip-smart -- she not only plays games with us, but invents her own games, like "read me my e-mail" and running with her tennis ball to the pond, dipping the ball in for a second, then running back. And she's simply sweet. She loves snuggles, kisses and tickles; she lives for those brief moments when Mollie, her idol, deigns to touch noses or give her a brief head rub. She even has, dare I say, a sense of humor; she knows what activities make us laugh. Some days she just whacks us with her paw, then looks up and grins, tail wagging.

If you knew Gertie like we know Gerite...you'd love her too. She's a good girl.

Just Say NO to NAIS

I'm committed to fighting the proposed National Animal Identification System, which endangers the livelihood of our already beleaguered small family farmers by forcing them to electronically ID every one of their animals. Lean more on my food blog , then contact your legislators and the USDA and tell them you, as a consumer, do not want Big Ag forcing small farms out of business by imposing this legislation.

A Verbal Friday Five

Some Friday Fives are very easy to respond to. This one is a "thinker"...hmmm...

The author of Life is a Verb, Patti Digh worked her book around these topics concerning life as a verb:

Say yes.
Be generous.
Speak up.
Love more.
Trust yourself.
Slow down.
As I read and pondered about living more intentionally, I also have wondered what this Friday Five should be. This book has been the jumping off point for this Friday.

1. What awakens you to the present moment?
At the risk of sounding cliche', our four-leggeds are very talented at grounding me in the present moment. They experience their lives as NOW, and draw me into that. (Just as an immediate example...nothing can get me out of a sleepy under-the-covers morning reverie like a cold, wet dog's nose pushing itself into my face: Wake up!)

2. What are 5 things you see out your window right now?
1)my two personally designed hanging flower baskets -- one containing a rather striking and unusual cerise-and-chartreuse coleus and a very dark purple ivy geranium, and one that holds a fancy begonia, coleus, pastel salvia and sweet potato vines 2)our lovely spirea bushes 3)our almost-empty hummingbird feeder, whose bee guards have mysteriously disappeared from the feeding stations over the past week 4)our pond, covered in fuzzy tree seeds 5)Mollie the cat, blinking.

3. Which verbs describe your experience of God?
complicated; humorous (this happens more often than one would expect); subtle.

4. From the book on p. 197:
Who were you when you were 13? Where did that kid go?
When I was 13 I was an extremely smart, extremely competitive, quirky girl beginning to emerge from a lonely childhood; beginning to find my people in junior high school. That kid was worn down by my parents' insecurities, anxieties, educational/experiential limitations and angry/unloving relationship with one another; by peer pressure; by internalizing others' expectations of how I should be. (Can you tell that perhaps I've broached this subject in therapy before?)

5. From the book on p. 88:
If your work were the answer to a question, what would the question be?
An interesting question to ask of someone who's currently not working at a paying job. Perhaps the question is, "If you had the freedom to do whatever you wanted, what would you do?"

Bonus idea for you here or on your own--from the book on p. 149:
"Go outside. Walk slowly forward. Open your hand and let something fall into it from the sky. It might be an idea, it might be an object. Name it. Set it aside. Walk forward. Open your hand and let something fall into it from the sky. Name it. Set it aside. Repeat. . . ."
Since I'm still sitting here in my nightie, that's probably not something I'm going to be doing in the next few minutes. Ask me again later today.

...With All Fingers Still Attached

Stained glass class went very well.

It was a good day. Long but good. Next week we start an actual project.

Glassy-Eyed

Tomorrow Fellow Traveler and I begin a new household venture: We are going to learn to make stained glass.

This is something FT has wanted to do for a long, long time, for creative and therapeutic reasons alike. I've always loved stained glass -- my 60's-era childhood coincided with the great hippie renaissance of stained glass, and I remember wanting to live in an old house with stained glass door and transom panels, and today I am a great admirer of classic stained glass designers like Edward Burne-Jones and William Comfort Tiffany -- but until now I never imagined attempting to create stained glass artwork myself. Between my perfectionistic deer-in-headlights response to new challenges and my tendency toward klutziness, I probably wouldn't have chosen a hobby involving rulers, sharp objects and a soldering iron; but I am trying to stretch out my comfort zone, if only because I want to live with the beautiful things I can create if I learn how to do this well.

We recently kitted ourselves out with the requisite tools, and tomorrow we are going to our first class in Bay City, where we learn how to use said tools, and how to handle glass without severing an artery; we'll also pick a simple design for a first project. (Not the lovely stained glass you see here, which is part of a window in the Liverpool Cathedral; hat tip to someone named Tim Rutledge, whose photo popped up when I did a Google search.)

I Sing the Body Electric?

Today while I'm at church Fellow Traveler is busy wiring an electric fence for the vegetable garden -- a necessity in a suburban neighborhood that includes an entire herd of deer, plus raccoons and rabbits.

Yesterday afternoon we set the post for the controller and the grounding wire, and pounded in the stakes; by the time the sun went down it almost looked as if we knew what we were doing.

Actually, FT is a precise and methodical thinker, and has the schematics in hand. Still, before I left I said, "Please don't flip the switch until I get home."

UPDATE!
Progress is being made:

AMen!

I've noticed a developing phenomenon in my role as assisting minister.

Our pastor has started using me as kind of a sidekick in his sermons. I am the Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson. He will make a salient point, or cite a Scripture text, or share some anecdote I told him in the past week, then look over at me in a meaningful way. I nod my head. He'll ask the congregation to raise their hands in response to a question ("How many of you ever feel...?" and then look at me. I nod and raise my hand.

Last week he was hitting on all sixes, and I found myself continually bobbing my head up and down. It made me almost -- almost -- want to break out into some un-Lutheran deacons'-corner affirmation: "You preach it, brother!" "Tell the truth!" Got a witness!" "Amen!"

Problem is, maybe a half-dozen people in the congregation would get the allusion; the others would simply conclude that I'd fallen off my trolley, or farther off my trolley than they'd originally thought.

Grace Note

Usually the sidebar adverts on Facebook are nothing short of annoying, but I rather enjoyed the new promo for the television show Saving Grace: "Embrace Your Grace."

Goofy Christians Online

One in an occasional series...

Did you know that Lutheranism is an apostate hotbed of pagan Mariolatry?

You bet your sweet BVM...at least according to this fascinating expose' of Lutheran theology by David J. Stewart, disciple of one Max Younce, ThD, someone who probably wouldn't invite Herr Dr. Luther to the faculty club for a collegial beer. (Enjoy the MP3 rants.)

Meanwhile, a warning for us all from Mr. Stewart: "If you hail Mary, you're hailing Satan!"

Hey, hey, hey -- don't talk about Homegirl that way, buddy.

Seedy Musings on Yesterday's Gospel

Sunday's Gospel text is here .

I'm the most impatient gardener in the world. I'm the adult equivalent of a small child digging up the bean she's just planted in a styrofoam cup to see if it's growing yet.

I've been gradually filling in my vegetable garden over the past two weeks -- two weeks of unusual rain and cold. The unseasonable weather amped up my angst over the health of the seeds in the ground. At one point I envisioned them all rotting in the sodden earth...of losing the long-season cucurbits altogether, and having to replant all the beans. My home-grown tomato plants had been literally flattened by two days of heavy rain; they'd never recover, I thought sadly.

Of course none of this happened. One evening I walked down to the garden and saw a thin green rows of emerging seedlings in my "salad" section, while squash plants were pushing their way out of my hills. The moribund young tomatoes were green and upright again.

Seeds grow in their own time.

Likewise, Jesus says in the Gospel lesson, the Reign of God grows in its own way, in God's own time.

Sometimes we Christians forget what Jesus said. We become triumphalists, wanting to take society by storm and force our vision of God's reign upon it like garden-show landscapers creating an artificial back yard under glass in the dead of winter -- it may look nice for a time, but it's unnatural, unsustainable and ultimately doomed. Or we attempt to seed Christianity into unwilling others on an individual basis, like a gardener attempting to plant flowers in pure sand, then getting angry at the sand for not producing a flower garden. Or we, like me, become easily discouraged when we don't perceive what God is up to in what looks like barren soil -- including the fallow places in our own lives. We want God's Reign to be something "big" and something "now."

But that's not how God works, according to Jesus. God works slowly and quietly, like a seed in the ground or yeast in a batch of dough. Our "yes" to God, our willingness to let God use the soil of our lives as a garden patch and to keep that spot tended, is our job; God will take care of the sowing and the growing.

A Foodie Friday Five

Yay! A Friday Five that hits the spot, so to speak, at our house -- I am en route to a local church yard sale so this will not be a particularly articulate or lengthy post, but...here goes:

1. Grocery shopping--love it or hate it?
I generally love it. I'm always puzzled by the glum and even angry faces I see at the supermarket. Really, the only time I ever don't like shopping for food is if we're planning a party or have been tapped to bring food to a function and have that time and performance pressure.

2. Who is the primary food shopper in your household?
That would be me. Fellow Traveler loves to cook, but shopping not so much, especially in ginormous chain supermarkets that tend to make her start hyperventilating and looking for an exit.

3. Do you have a beloved store like TJ's which is unique to your location or family?
We love Trader Joe's as well -- unfortunately the closest TJ's is almost three hours away, so we only get to shop there on our infrequent trips to the Detroit/Ann Arbor area. We also love Whole Foods -- as constant readers know, the "no-commitment" tag-end cheese bin is one of our very favorite things -- but have the same dilemma shopping there. (We've taken to toting a cooler along with us on our trips downstate so that we can load up with provisions at both stores.) My favorite store in our own area is the Greentree Food Cooperative, where we do a great deal of our grocery shopping. It's a small store with a crunchy-granola vibe...friendly staff...competitive prices...lots of local/regional foods...great music (I actually do take this into consideration in quality-of-shopping)...everyone in the store, staff or customer, seems happy to be there. What a concept.

4. How about a farmer's market, or CSA share, as we move into summer? Or do you grow your own fruits/veggies/herbs?
Sadly, the concept of Community Supported Agriculture has not arrived here in the greater Outer Podunk/Castorville area. (And probably never will.) If we were in the vicinity of a CSA farm we'd join in a heartbeat. We do, though, have an assortment of Amish roadside stands we patronize all during the growing season, and especially in the later days of summer we purchase most of our vegetables there. We also have a nice farmer's market in our county whose owners grow their own produce; I love driving past the fields of growing vegetables, knowing that those are what I will find inside the store. We also visit the Midland Farmers' Market from time to time, although we're finding fewer truly local growers there and more produce retailers who are actually getting their stuff from places like Eastern Market; which rather defeats the whole idea of a farmers' market. Sigh. (I'm told the onerous regulations involved in selling produce to the public through these venues keep a lot of smaller growers out of the game. Which is why we get a perverse kick out of patronizing famiilies' humble roadside stands instead -- Fight The Power.) When it comes to meat, we have increasingly weaned ourselves off supermarket meat, and instead buy it from places like Graham's Organics, a local farm with its own organic/sustainably grown meat market, and other small establishments where we can discover the pedigree, so to speak, of what we're eating.

5. What's the favorite thing you buy at the grocery store?
That's a hard question to answer. I myself have a great deal of fun in produce sections -- particularly at our food coop, where as the summer progresses we'll be seeing more vegetables from the Swier Farm, a local organic grower. We also like trying ethnic foods, so on our perhaps monthly excursions to Meijer's, our regional big-box store with a huge, diverse grocery section, we stalk the ethnic aisle looking for sauces and ingredients. Because FT has an easier time digesting grains than a lot of other foods, I'm also always on the prowl for interesting whole grains and pastas that aren't too hard on the digestive system and that can be made in our rice cooker (one of the greatest inventions of all time). Tough, fibrous grains like rye or wheat berries are out, but we do enjoy quinoa, specialty rices and interesting pastas...Israeli couscous is one of our newer discoveries, and we just love the texture and ease of cooking.

Week Two at the Church Office

It was a little busier yesterday at church -- I received three phone calls as well as a visit from the pastor, who was taking a break from his sabbatical cottage remodeling project. He is having a blast learning carpentry from a mentor-friend of his -- among other things, they are creating a meditation room, which I think is very cool -- and, he notes, just getting physical instead of spending most of his day inside his and others' heads.

Fellow Traveler and Gertie accompanied me yesterday; FT worked on the church website for awhile, but was thwarted in uploading it when we realized we didn't have the passcode to the church's wi-fi, and no one could tell us what it was or where it might be written down. (Once upon a time I could get very irritated with this sort of thing, which I'd attribute to deliberate obfuscation, but now I realize that communication breakdowns at our church are most often caused by general cluelessness. And this is especially true when it comes to technology.)

We ordered lunch from the local grocery store, where we're getting to know some of the staff even though I don't think they're quite aware that we're "church ladies" from down the street. I figure the local economy in the area surrounding our church needs every cent of outside money it can get. (Which is also why we've been patronizing this tiny store's meat counter -- where, among other things, we were able to purchase a significant whole pork loin for about $15; take that, big-box stores!)

I'm finding that it's very hard to concentrate on my take-to-work-work HTML lessons sitting in the midst of the pastor's considerable library; after a half-hearted attempt at coding an incredibly boring web page assignment, I found myself instead reading a book about the Amish,written by a German anthropologist...and a book about controlling religious communities...and a book about shamanism...well, you get the drift. Putting me in a roomful of books is like putting a diabetic in the middle of a Godiva shop and saying, "Don't eat anything."

Even though I feel like the Maytag repairman on my office day, I enjoy being at our church. It's making me feel a bit more connected to the community, even if only in terms of running down to the store for a sandwich. And I think the village appreciates the fact that the church isn't locked up during the day, like so many these days; that if someone needs to stop in, they can find a human being or two inside.