Book Lust

When I started writing seriously my literature libido declined. Too busy engaging with my own little set of characters, I didn’t have the energy to mingle at someone else’s party. But now that Faerewryn has gone off to be compiled into a progressive novel that may or may not go to print and Dolores requires an additional 30,000 words of tale spin, I’ve started reading again.

Author Ann Voskamp says in this week’s World Magazine that when you hit a dry spell in your writing, you aren’t reading enough. She suggests reading several books at once. They talk to each other and you can join the conversation.  She also maintains that list writing generates spiritual attentiveness. To that end, I’m recommitting to my practice of keeping an annotated list of what I’m reading. I use the Book Lust Journal by Nancy Pearl.

I’m drawn these days to read imagined characters set in real world context; most recently Caleb’s Crossing and Remarkable Creatures. In both cases the protagonists keep their minds and hearts open while working alongside people with limited perception. It’s always a push to see the bigger picture. 

As engaging as writing and reading are, it’s still a party with fictional people so I took myself off in search of the bigger picture—to Central Europe to meet real people in historical settings.  It’s inspiring to see young people emerging from centuries of oppression with hope for better times, even though hope is tempered with uncertainty.

My travel companion Sharon and her Polish cousins

I love the café societies where people meet face to face and electronic devices are consulted, not worn as armor against intruders.

I’m back in the New World now, missing the city squares where people gather in front of makeshift big screens to cheer their favorite football team—for free! I love crossing bridges that span the old and the new, walking cobblestone streets, popping into an art gallery or a palace (there’s not palace on your block?) to enjoy a concert before dinner, gazing out my window over red-topped roofs that undulate across the horizon of time, punctuated by golden church spires that wear globes, crosses and stars like a Hapsburg monarch wore her jewels. 

As lovely as the Old World is though, I would not trade freedom for antiquity.  

Revise us

Steinway artist Randall Atcheson gave new flourish to old hymns at The 2012 Christian Writers Guild conference. He also sang with gusto if not giftedness and practically danced on the piano, delighting worshippers with his colorful tie and matching socks sprouting out of checkered loafers. He embodied joy.  Best of all, he rewrote the lyrics for his audience of writers.  Revive us again became Revise us again and wouldn’t we all like that?

The Morning Rush

A CBS Sunday Morning interviewer caught actress Michelle Williams in a revealing moment of self-awareness when he essentially asked her if she was addicted to adulation. Pain and frustration clouded her blue eyes as she acknowledged her dependence on the affirmation of others. The more that people told her she was doing a good job, the more she needed to hear it. She said it was a constant struggle for her.

 As a writer, I struggle with this same issue. An Editor’s Choice placement in the bi-weekly Faithwriters’ Challenge sends my confidence soaring, but never for long. Two weeks later, when I fail to place in the top ten, the ground pulls away from under my feet. Oh let’s be honest, two hours later I’m surfing the net looking for a contest I can win so I can feel the rush all over again!

A reminder in my morning Bible study pricked my conscience. God expects me to bring the desires of my heart to Him and seek His purpose. It is difficult to ask Christ to fulfill the desire of my heart without confronting this issue: how pure are my motives?

I want to publish my book. My motives are not fortune or fame. Breaking even is desirable, but being acknowledged as a writer worthy of publication is probably closer to my true motivation.  If I am forced to state this in terms that God might approve I would say that I want to produce a work of quality that touches hearts.

Taking our eyes off our approval ratings and placing them on the One who can align our work to His purpose is probably a bigger rush, and one that lasts longer.    

Joining the Party

Heading out to a Zumba class I threw a backward glance at the laundry piled on the chair in my bedroom waiting to be folded. As I pushed myself forward past my writing studio I felt a strong desire to make a detour. I really wanted to get back to work on a ghost story I’d been writing. I turned back and wailed in the direction of my spouse.

 “I wish I could clone myself!” 

He looked up from the book he was reading as I continued my rant. “I would like to be three people. One of me would work out, one of me would write and one of me would put the house in order.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to do all three at once! But I want to be one person experiencing all three activities at the same time.”

I entertained that idea all the way down the stairs.  “Maybe my clones have different personalities,” I shouted up to him from the bottom of the stairs.  “Hey, maybe that’s what God did – cloned himself to form the Trinity!”

I’m not suggesting that is actually what happened, but it does give me a different slant on Christ’s role experiencing life as a human to edify the Godhead. Perhaps the esoteric Spirit who hovered over the waters is the celebrant of the secretive, mysterious nature of God. Maybe God is a party of One, attended by three guests of honor and we are on the invitation list because we live in Christ’s heart rent-free.

Does God entertain Himself with us, in the broader sense of the word – holding, possessing, preserving and cherishing? That’s a party I’d like to attend.

Because we can

This morning I read in my morning devotional that our souls are preserved by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the pungent fragrance of strawberry jam bubbling on the stove filled the air around me. Perhaps a reason we have trouble making our faith real is because so few of us can anymore. We’ve traded long hours in front of the stove for long hours bent over a computer.  What we’ve gained in mental stimulation we’ve lost in the sensory input that is our soul’s nerve endings.

Strawberries are like people, beautiful for a season and then they die unless they are preserved. Preserving strawberries is a process much like the work of the Holy Spirit. Years ago I took my young daughter out into a field in Watsonville and we picked strawberries. Some fell easily into our hands.  Some had to be tugged. We left the ones with a hard green side to ripen in the sun. We mourned those bloated with rot, left them on the ground to feed the soil for next year’s crop.

Back in the kitchen, our work began.  We prepared the fruit: culling, washing, removing stems and imperfections. Strawberry juice ran down our arms, dripped onto the floor and we barefooted through the mess, moving from counter to sink to stove. The linoleum floor got sticky. The air got hot as summer poured in through the open patio door and steam rose from the Revereware pot full of fruit simmering on the stove.

We added sugar to intensify the flavor, tasted and it was good. We sterilized glass jars to protect the fruit, ladled in the sweet steamy stuff, screwed down the lids and popped a batch into the canner for processing.  Our fingers burned touching the hot glass.

Was it precious little yield for so much work? Perhaps, but seeing the pints and quarts of gleaming fruit lined up on the kitchen counter like victorious soldiers on parade in smart dress uniforms, smelling the nectar-soaked air in the kitchen, cradling a softened whole berry in the curve of our tongues while warm fruity sauce filled our mouths, it was heaven!

Preserving fruit is a meditation on the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s a long, messy,  painful, engaging, exhilarating experience. There are steps and sequences, waiting periods and celebration times.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good.” Psalm 34:8

A Puzzlement

When I tell people I write a blog, they inevitably ask, “what is your blog about?” I suppose the answer is that Riddles on the Harp is about anything I find puzzling.  For that reason, I will never run out of things to blog about.

To my mind, a blog is a form of personal essay. Essayist Dinty W. Moore stews on this in Crafting the Personal Essay. He calls essay writing a gentle art where writers explore a topic from their own unique perspective.  They begin with questions rather than answers.

In an essay in the Atlantic’s 2011 special fiction issue, Bret Anthony Johnston says writers may enter stories through literal experience but that that fiction transcends the limitations of fact and history. “What matters is our characters, those constructions of imagination that can transcend our biases and agendas... “

Johnston is speaking of the characters we create in our writing, but this is also true of our moral character.  We reach greater heights when we approach a topic from a platform of integrity, courage, fortitude honesty and loyalty instead of an agenda that boxes us in with people who agree with us and shuts everyone else out.

 The joy of placing a riddle on your harp is in the process of discovery. In the course of forming words into patterns on a page, the writer listens for what rings true and hopes others will also hear a pleasing melody.

Riddles are often amusing and always engaging. That the image of a riddle on a harp comes from the Bible is not surprising.  The Bible is riddled with word play. What is a parable but a metaphor or allegory to ponder or a conundrum to try to resolve? The parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:36) works on many levels.  When Jesus poses the question, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” he expands the meaning of the word neighbor just by asking the question.

That God chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise (1Cor:27) has always been a puzzle for me. What holds meaning for God’s people is undecipherable when we rely on our own resources of intelligence, wealth and power. Why, then, is my first instinct to reason, spend or manipulate my way out of a problem rather than to pray?  I have to ask myself.  

The Dao of Connections

I look up to the mountains. Where can I find my help? Psalm 121 Song of Ascents

Worldviews collide and the Dow disapproves. Some media dub the U.S. drubbing as historic and others label it not unexpected, but a yawn. Whichever way you see it, living with the consequences will not be boring.

For that matter, spectrum itself is subject to argument – a utility that can remain regulated and underused or freed up for innovative uses that might create jobs and turn a profit. While we are mulling this over, I am reminded of a blue screen we recently experienced.

Popped a DVD into the blu-ray recorder and got the dreaded blue screen.  Uh oh.

“Didn’t we just retune the receiver to pick up some signals that were dropping?” says I.

“This is the recorder. We need to do a firmware update,” says he.

And, isn’t that just like life? I thought about that in Sunday service when pastor, preaching on Exodus, asked the question, “Who do you want to be influenced by?” Well, good question. The next question is, “And what am I doing to put myself in the sphere of influence of those people?”

From time to time, I also need a firmware update. What is fixed in my brain needs to be reset so I better understand. I need to retune my heart to pick up signals I’m missing.

I suspect the powers that govern our country are missing some signals.  As a result, we may be facing an economic blue screen.

Channeling Sarah Winchester

I get Sarah Winchester.  She thought as long as she could hear the sounds of construction in her house, she would never die. I too feel happy when I hear the industrious buzz of worker bees in my house –updating a bathroom or installing fresh carpet that banishes old red wine stains and cat barf we discovered when we moved the piano.
 

It seems that I wake up every morning to unfinished business. Unlike Sarah, my agenda is not to live in this body, in this house, on this earth for eternity. Still, I feel compelled to wrap things up in an orderly fashion.

I want to put my house in order, literally and figuratively.  I want to finish things – the revision of my novel, my ancestry tree, the pile of photos and photo albums sitting in the corner.

Even though I know it’s a race I won’t win, I want to maintain things. In aerobics the other morning the instructor on our tape encouraged us to let the house go and take better care of the temple – this body we live in. If I took as good care of my body as I do my house, I would look like Queen Esther.

Life seems to have a heavy maintenance schedule. I’ve started considering that when some delightful shelf dweller wants to go home with me. Is it worth the time to learn how to use it, the space to store it and the aggravation of caring for it?  Usually not.

It’s come to my attention that I got way to good at acquisition, and now I can’t get rid of stuff fast enough. Today I tossed a pair of Capri pants because they take too long to iron. Also a pair of vacation pants I bought for my husband so he would look like a stud.  Because he defines “stud” as a surface that doesn’t require a molly bolt, they’ve never been worn. I sorted my Tupperware into square containers and round containers and bagged all the round ones. Square containers without lids are followed their round cousins to the thrift shop.

In the glee of divestiture, I still find I want to start things – not new rooms in my house but new life experiences. I think that’s where Sarah and I part company.  I don’t need any more rooms in my house.  I need room in my life for God to fill with good things.

Watercolors

I took my first watercolor class yesterday.  Let’s put a frame around that.  I took a watercolor class at the Yosemite Art and Education Center; with my five and seven-year old grandkids (GKs); on a day when sunlight tangoed with the trees in the meadow and the falls spilled snowmelt like a bosomy matron in a bikini.

I’d spent the past two weeks observing the GKs who sponge new experiences with thirsty glee. On this year’s summer visit, they learned to keep a horse’s head up and out of a tempting salad of poison oak and swim without water wings to the platform in the middle of the lake (don’t tell their mom). The boy improved his aim with the BB gun he keeps here and the girl learned to knit. (I will make no comment on gender roles; it was their choice.)

It was interesting to see how differently we all approached the lesson as we sat in the meadow and sketched our view of Half Dome. The five-year-old drew big a teepee-shaped rock in the middle of his paper and then filled in detail around it from his imagination. After the seven-year-old pulled her attention away from the “eeuuuwww” factor of small bugs flying into her face she produced a very credible sketch. I, on the other hand, put pencil to paper and froze.

As I pulled my pencil along the pebbly paper a refrain started up in my head – I am really bad at this.  I pressed on, filling in more detail than is appropriate for a watercolor sketch and assessing my progress at intervals – the perspective is off; the scale of the tree in the foreground is wrong; this looks more like Mt. Fuji than Half Dome.    

We returned from the meadow and pulled out the paints.  At the end of the day, the children each had a drawing they were proud of and I had a soggy piece of paper. They learned the difference between poster paints and water colors.  I learned some life lessons.

Where to begin -- the sky or the grass? No, begin with the focal point. I may make that a daily practice.

A sketch is a roadmap for your painting.  It should be drawn lightly enough to be erased before you add color. It should include notes about color choices. Note to self: what in my life could benefit from an eraser and what needs color?

Blending watercolors is a delicate and mysterious art.  Who knew that gray wasn’t black dumbed down a little with white. “Try pulling in a bit of yellow into that muddy drop, or a little blue, and see what you get,” our teacher suggested. We got thrilling purplish and peachy grays. 

So much to learn – like any art, watercolor must needs be learned from a master and practiced over time.  I wish I’d started earlier. I return to my writing with a fresh perspective.  There are so many rich experiences in life to pull in.  

The Four Spiritual Questions

I've given a lot of thought to how to boil down the Christian message to the essentials in a way that people who struggle with their identity can grasp.  I know my readers are shy about responding, but any feedback would be appreciated.  

1.      Who am I? 
It depends on who you ask. I like the explanation Jesus gives us.  You are a sinner.  That’s who you are. You are God’s child, and a sinner.

2.      What do I about that?
Jesus is clear and direct in his answer when he says I am the way, the truth and the life.   After that, the fun begins. We each work out our salvation – the full implication of what it means to be a sinner saved by grace – with fear and trembling. Fear in the sense of the respect we give to the message and its giver; trembling in full appreciation of the joy we receive when we travel that path.

3.      What if I don’t like the answer?
You are free to choose another answer, but remember -- not making a choice is a choice. You live on the Devil’s playground and you can play there until Kingdom come or you can join the family of God and then the question – who am I? – becomes irrelevant. The question becomes, who are You, God?

4.      How do I join God’s family?
Allow God to work in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. God is love. If you spend your life being genuine, loving your wife/husband/neighbor/brother as yourself, holding fast to what is good, being patient and kind, bearing, believing, hoping and enduring, your reward is love. You become love. That’s who you are in Christ Jesus because he first loved you. Apart from Him you don’t have the genuine fruits of love. Take your eyes off Him and you lose the power to love perfectly.

Don't get even, get mad!

Today I paced around my house with a hammer in my hand looking for a head to bash. My husband scuttled downstairs and stayed there. The painter working in the upstairs bathroom stayed out of sight.  I won’t say whose head I wanted to bash, but it wasn’t one of those two heads. 

I wanted to crack open this head with a sharp clean blow and peer inside, then reach for a box of brains and dump them in,  followed by a healthy measure of common sense and compassion. While I’m at it, I might like to do some rewiring.

Getting so riled up pretty much ruined my whole day, because from outrage it’s not too much of a jump to get in God’s face and rail at Him – do something!

At our book study tonight we talked about whether living life fully requires us to fully experience our feelings, both good and bad.  There is a latency in the way I experience feelings, a built in time delay. It can be hours or days before it hits me that...I...am...angry!!! First, I analyze a situation. Then I look for a label to paste on the offending behavior so it will make sense to me. Then I look to God for an answer, but He seems to have a built in latency in His response as well. Meanwhile, I am full of this feeling that must needs expression.

As the book we are studying is about giving thanks for everyday blessings, I will now give thanks for animation. Visualizing committing murderous mayhem on a cartoon head is a cathartic release for my pent-up frustration with everything that is wrong with world that just happens to find it’s fullness in this one individual. It’s an “aha” moment to realize that the hours my children spent watching a fat beaked black duck bop a wiseacre rabbit (or the other way around, I forget) were more productive than I realized and may actually have kept them out the penitentiary.

Of course, the place I need to get to is prayer for a soul who is in distress and causing distress. While I am cracking an imaginary head, the Christ who breaks His heart to heal ours (one thousand gifts by Ann Voskamp, p. 40) breaks a real heart.

I, too, am heartbroken.

Feeling Lucky?

I’ve had cause to contemplate the difference between luck and blessing as I’ve listened to different folks express thanks for the sun that shined on an event or the serendipity that got them to where they hoped to go. Those who credit luck may also express appreciation. They send up thanks, like balloons, trusting that credit will be received where credit is due. God or no God, everyone acknowledges that a thankful heart is a happy heart.

Those who see blessing in the happy outcome have a different perspective.  Luck just happens. Blessing is bestowed. Luck is impersonal. You lucked out and that makes you happy. Blessing is personal. God gets the credit and that fills you with joy.

Luck can be appreciated, but blessing can be appropriated. You can take ownership of it and assign it a value because you receive it as a gift. Better than that, you can pass it on.  That sunny day created just for you is a reminder that God cares. Your thankful prayer hits the target of God’s heart. Most likely it radiates out like the sun itself, asking the Creator to shine His blessing on those you love. And he does.

Of course, should the rain fall you have a choice.  Deem it unlucky, or look for the blessing in the rain.  I’m betting you’ll find it.  

Life

There was a time when she could see the shore from her boat. She spent long lazy days bobbing off the coast. Sometimes she practiced maneuvering her craft; sometimes she lay on the floor boards and watched a cinema of clouds play in the sky. She hardly noticed when her boat caught a drift and pulled her away from the shore.


As the shore receded from view, she used the skills she had practiced to keep her boat steady. At first, she kept an eye on the distant shore, but soon she learned other ways to navigate. The sun and the moon helped her stay on course, although what path in these waters she followed she couldn’t say. Each morning, other vessels appeared on the horizon and it seemed good to her to set her compass in their direction.

She found she was happiest in the society of other vessels. In the vast stretch of water, she would tie her boat up with others and they would drift together for a time. Self-proclaimed captains, they would tell each other stories that encouraged, dismayed, intrigued, delighted and terrified. In time, it seemed prudent to travel in flotillas.

She didn’t pay as much attention to the heavens now. There was too much work to do: maintaining the boats, fishing, bringing new arrivals up to speed on how to navigate the changing seasons. Then, just as she had slipped away from the shore so many years ago, she found herself unmoored and alone in her boat.

The sea was a wall behind her, obstructing her view of where she had been. She couldn’t see above the chop of water ahead of her. Above her, the sky was dark. Starlight reflected a weak Illumination on the black water that surrounded her. She no longer felt in control of her boat. The skills she’d honed over the years were gone and there was nothing for it but to keep her balance as best she could. She focused on trying to stay in the boat.

After her little boat broke apart in the ocean, before she began a new journey, words formed from the deep and roared in a whisper in her ear. Well done.

Psalm 77:19 KJV Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known.

The Olive Branch

I picked for my devotions this year to spend “A Year with C.S. Lewis” and

“Morning and Evening” with Charles Spurgeon. It’s proving to be a good choice.

Spurgeon wrote an entry about the dove that brought an olive branch back to the ark. He called the olive branch “the memorial of the past day, and a prophecy of the future.”

In the instance of the olive branch, the dove returned to Noah a souvenir of its day. Just as we shop carefully on our travels for a memento to bring back to a friend to give her a sense of what we have experienced, so the olive branch recalled an encounter that pleased the dove. The branch represented firm ground and life-giving bounty to the hand that reached out from the sea-tossed vessel to receive it.

Spurgeon challenges his readers to bring home pleasing records that pledge loving kindness. He suggests that we present to our Lord grateful acknowledgements of tender mercies which we experience as new every morning and fresh every evening.

What a lovely thought. I will look for the olive branches in each day that remind me that God loves and cares for me, memorials that testify to His Presence and His promise to sustain me. Like the dove, I will bring my daily souvenirs before my Lord. We will admire them together.

Witchy woman

There are occult, sports and finance definitions for the witching hours, but normal people don’t need Wikipedia to define the witching hour for them. It’s the period of time between 3 and 4 am when you lie wide awake, wishing for sleep.

It's also that period of time between 3 and 4 pm when the kids or experience a drop in blood sugar levels that brings out their inner nasty ogre. They flail, they whine, they really do appear to be possessed. It’s the time you abandon your diet and reach for every evil thing you can stuff in your mouth.


Donovan wrote a song about the witching season. The lyrics are part of my brain DNA, yet their meaning escapes me. When I’m perplexed about something – like why I’m awake at 3 am or who turned these kids into Godzilla – I get a brain buzz:

You’ve got to pick up every stitch.

Mmm, must be the season of the witch

I’m a knitter. I know that if I drop a stitch, the whole piece of work unravels. If I miss something in whatever mystery I’m trying to solve, I will never see the truth.

A witch is classically defined as an ugly hag with malignant, supernatural powers; alternatively she is an attractive woman with allure. As an archetype, her truth has two sides, evil and benign.

Judeo-Christian tradition condemns the practice of witchcraft, most often referred to as sorcery and most specifically focused on the sin of idolatry. Do I have “seasons of the witch?” Oh yes.

As sure as the seasons come and go, I will vacillate between that which merely distracts and that which has the power to undo me. Exodus 22:18 cautions us not to suffer a witch to live. When things go wrong, rather than employing this verse to justify whatever witch hunt is de rigueur stop and count your stitches. Maybe while you are lying awake at 3 am.

What have you let slide that is affecting the shape of things? What have you picked up that you should have left alone? Are there holes in what you’re doing? Unevenness an extra stitch may have caused? Pick up the spiritual practice you dropped. Drop the unnecessary activity that threatens your perfect design.

About the baby Godzillas, I haven’t a clue. And, what possessed me to put a brownie in my mouth after I’d been good all day? Must be the season of the witch.

January Snow

A fresh snow in January spreads like hope for the new year. Like a new resolution, it allows the eye to skip over distractions buried beneath – the rotting leaves of past seasons, the new buds of the season to come. They are there, like the seeds of weeds that will plague us in springtime, but we don’t see them in January when it snows.


For a time, vision cross country skis in exhilarating rhythm over paths we don’t normally trod. January is a time to abandon ruts, set our feet on new tracks and just go! Buried below our feet may be a pavement edge engineered to warn us away from a meadow, but just now we are free to wander.

Time and space expand at the beginning of a new year that has clothed itself in a thick, glistening robe and swept its train across the landscape. January is a blessedly long month in which to recover from December’s revelry. Soon enough, muddy holes will burn their way through the fabric of our winter, presenting obstacles to our best intentions.

Now, rest.

20Leaven

Twenty eleven sounds kinda clunky. Nineteen eleven has a lovely illiteration. You don’t mind letting those five syllables linger on your tongue. Same with twenty twelve – three strong syllables that chime like a bell. But twenty eleven? That’s a slog; precisely what we hope 2011 won’t be.


I propose we shorten the pronunciation to twenty’leven, or a more thought provoking 20leaven. The action of leaven lightens and softens a finished product and gives good things the ability to rise and increase in volume.

As we reflect on 2010, a year of struggle, what have we learned that we can use as leaven in 2011? Hard times can be incubators for new ideas. Adjusting to “new normals” gives us our ideas time to ferment and produce in a good year.

What in your life could profit from a little leaven? Is 2011 the year you rise to an occasion or a challenge, increase your giving, reach or influence, lighten your hold on something, soften your attitude toward someone?

May 2011 produce good things in you.

Resolution? Not!

My sister, who should learn how to leave a comment or get her own blog, sent me an email response to my posting on resolutions that is too good not to share:

New Year Resolutions? Made to be broken.

List of Goals? Perhaps; most of us are fairly goal oriented and probably have a few to do lists hanging around anyway.
List of last year’s accomplishments? Oh my, no, that sounds prideful.

As Christians, we are quite adept at listing our shortcomings and failings. But how often do we list our accomplishments? and even, heaven forbid, share them with others? And yet, James reminds us that “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights… .” Accomplishments in my life are certainly good and perfect gifts. And, lest you think I have taken this phrase out of context, the chapter begins with a discussion on the result of perseverance: “…let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” That sounds like a pretty good definition of “accomplishment” to me.

So this New Year’s Day I’m going to make a list of my accomplishments from 2010. I might even share my list with someone. And just so I don’t stray too far out of bounds, perhaps I will make a list of what I would like to accomplish in 2011.

My list of accomplishments from 2010:

1. Established the habit of daily scripture reading
2. Learned more about effective prayer
3. Made some headway towards not complaining as much
4. Continued to maintain healthier weight and good diet
5. Walked 3-4 times a week

Be it resolved

I am a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. It always surprises me how many people pale, throw their hands up in front of their faces in self defense and back away when I ask, “What is your New Year’s resolution?” I think that’s because they hear a different question: ‘What have you purposed in your heart that you know the minute you verbalize will come to nothing?”


I can’t help myself. Just like people who have SAD, a seasonal affective disorder that depresses the spirit when the sun takes a hike, I have SID, a seasonal intention disorder that compels me to set quarterly and annual goals. Over the years, I’ve found ways to frame these resolutions in ways that produce life change instead of persistent defeat.

Choose a mantra

Choosing words to live by for a year can help you focus on areas in which you’d like to grow. They are easy to remember. You can use them to decide which life adventures to pursue and what might need purging. Here are some examples:

Compassion, charity, courage, clarity

Simplify, purify, magnify

Rest, refresh, renew

Face a fear

One year my job went south. I was still employed, but I had nothing to do. Believe it or not, collecting a paycheck for doing nothing is stressful. That’s because the organization will either find a place for you in the new normal, or at the end of the day you will be unemployed, but there is nothing you can do to affect the outcome. So I decided to do something scarier than hanging out in limbo. I took lessons to learn how to land an airplane and landed the Piper at San Jose International. You can’t think about anything else when you are setting up for a landing in a plane you don’t know very much about. Now, every year, I look for a big scary challenge.

Give it a year

Years ago, I got tired of beating myself up for all the ways I fell short. I decided to take one year off guilt. I told myself that if it didn’t work (if I began to sink into an abyss of self-indulgence), at the end of the year I would reinstall the guilt program. That was the year I learned how to say “no.” (No, I’m not good at that. No, I don’t’ want to do that. Thanks for asking, but no.) I was a freer, happier person at the end of that year.

Establish a habit

Will Power is a character with poor motivational skills. He’s a task master who exhausts easily, a parent who yells and then leaves the child alone in a room with temptation. Any resolution needs a plan to establish a new habit that supports a new behavior. Are you thinking that 4 p.m. glass of wine to settle your nerves is only making you too sleepy to cook a healthy dinner? Will Power can scream “don’t do that anymore,” all he wants in your face, but facing Will just makes you feel you actually need two glasses of wine to get through the witching hour. Maybe make it a habit to have a refreshing assortment of teas and a special tea cup or mug available. Find a favorite corner and stash some short reads there, or your iPod dock or your Sudoku book. I made an investment in a fuzzy bear footstool with real lamb’s wool. The minute I put my feet up on Griffin, I relax. It’s getting to be a habit.

Cookies

It distresses me, invitations to cookie exchanges. I wouldn’t ask you to write a novel; why would you expect me to bake cookies?


I want to be neighborly. I want to brighten the holidays for the bereaved with ‘lovin’ from the oven,’ but dang, I’m just not very good at it. Truth is, I’m not a ‘sweet’ person. Sweet things make my teeth feel like they’ve committed a crime for which they will be executed. Sweets electrocute my teeth with a buzz that plunges through my tooth enamel and zips straight through the root canal to the bone. Not the bliss I hope for when I filch a second toffee bar from the plate.

I figured there must be other cookie junkies looking to go clean, so for this latest cookie exchange, I googled “spice cookies.” It’s a simple recipe. After overcoming my fear of the behemoth Mixmaster I inherited from my mother, all seemed well. The machine mixed the ingredients into some semblance of cookie dough. Like champagne, it needed to chill, so I chilled it and poured myself a glass of champagne.

Three hours later, I plunked a hunk of dough on the counter and attempted to beat it into submission. The dough appeared to suffer from tension and stress, so I massaged it vigorously with a rolling pin. It warmed up a bit and relaxed enough that I could cut shapes with the only cutters I have – a little spice boy and a candy cane that looks like a golf bag.

The best thing I can say about these cookies is they emitted a lovely aroma that filled my kitchen. It smelled like the wise men came through with bags of cloves, nutmeg and allspice. My first clue that something was wrong was when I took them out of the oven and they looked the same as when they went in. Then I dropped one and it didn’t break. These cookies are like concrete, smooth, heavy and bland. I’m thinking maybe I should glaze or frost them but Joel, after he stops laughing, decides they need faces and belly buttons, so he goes to town on the next batch. They look so cute;I think maybe we’ll just hang them on the tree instead.

I arrange a plate to take to the cookie exchange and plop an undercooked spice boy in the center. When you take them out of the oven at 12 minutes instead of 15 minutes they wrinkle a bit when they cool, so this guy looks like Old Spice man with a lecherous grin. That ought to cheer someone up.

I’m not expecting anyone to ask me for the recipe.

Cookies-to-go was a lovely event. We assembled 36 plates of cookies and took them to people in the community who needed a special touch. God bless the Free Church Ladies and heal the hearts of those who hurt, mourn and grieve at this season.