This Classical Life

Today I was at the Jewish Community Center and a flipped-open copy of Southern Jewish Life alerted me to the fact that you can get prescription drugs relatively cheaply from Israel. Magen David Meds can be your Israeli pharmacy, and with $10 shipping to the U.S. it may be worth checking out.

After two months of daily blogging, I took a few days respite. As I ran errands today, I was thinking about what I ought to blog about. Walking through Wal-Mart gave me several things to consider blogging about such as how annoying it was that the organic fruit snacks are up high and the “bad” ones shaped like princesses are at child’s eye view.

An hour and cart full of groceries later, the girls hit their breaking point and melted down over who was going to get the orange juice out of the case and put it in the cart. (At least they fight about helping, right?) My nearest fellow customer glared at them, and then at me. I tried unsuccessfully to mediate and then, a man walked toward me.

He was an older gentleman, and he reminded me of my great uncle Joe and his posse of Italian old men. Dressed in one of those old man tracksuits, with glasses and shaggy hair, he approached me with a smile. He clasped both his hands around mine, and I felt something pass between us. When I opened my hand I found two small lollipops. I thanked him profusely, then handed the candy to the children, who in their preoccupation with juice had missed the exchange completely. “Where’s this candy from?” they asked. “That nice gentleman there.” They bounded over to say thank you, and he returned once again. I watched as he reached his hand into his unzipped pocket and pulled out a big handful of butterscotch candies, giving them to me. We shared a smile, and he walked away.

It’s funny, two minutes earlier I had been thinking about 1 John 4, where it says that love is from God, and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God, and more than that, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us. When I least expected it, I found love in the dairy aisle at Super Wal-Mart. I hope to be that gracious, to reach out to the harried and discouraged, and to remind them that they are not alone. At minimum, I hope to be a little old lady with a big purse full of lollipops.

+ Tonight will probably be the only time I ever say the words of institution out loud in church. about 5 hours ago from web
+ Tonight’s reception reminded me of my longstanding desire to be a part of a culture with group dancing (e.g. Greek, Lebanese.) 11:51 PM Jan 23rd from Tweetie
+ Fresh air with k+l since school let out. Bikes, bubbles, chalk, friendly dogs. I even adjusted a bike. 5:06 PM Jan 21st from Tweetie
+ I have inherited a mangia mentality from my Italian gma: I show love through food & receive love when people enjoy it. 9:30 PM Jan 20th from Tweetie

On this day that we stop and remember a complex and human man, and the great injustice he fought, here are some words he spoke in his commencement address at Oberlin College, in June of 1965.

“All mankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be - this is the interrelated structure of reality. John Donne caught it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… And then he goes on toward the end to say: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. And by believing this, by living out this fact, we will be able to remain awake through a great revolution. (more…)

The internets say its National Delurking Day. I’d love to know who is out there reading these days.

On deck for future posts:
A review of the Book Thief
Hippie Cookies and Other Adventures in Child Nutrition

“To know that I am ‘a white male American human,’ that a red bird with black wings is ‘a scarlet tanager,’ that this is ‘a riparian plant community’–all that is helpful to a necessary kind of thought. But when I try to make my language more particular, I see that the life of this place is always emerging beyond expectation or prediction or typicality, that it is unique, given to the world minute by minute, only once, never to be repeated. And then is when I see that this life is a miracle, absolutely worth having, absolutely worth saving….Perhaps we should wish that after the processes of reduction, scientists would return, not to the processes of synthesis and integration, but to the world of our creatureliness and affection, our joy and grief, that precedes and (so far) survives all of our processes.”

Back when I was posting less, I set up the blog to publish as notes via rss on my facebook page. And so, I get comments both places. For the most part, this is fine, but every so often a post sparks the sort of comments which are more conversational, and readers interact with one another. The division of such comments between the places seems wrong.

I am not a very active facebook user, I typically check in once a day for a few minutes. I am much more likely to catch something via my feed reader than the notes section of facebook, but I realize others have different habits. Being able to “like” something on facebook with just a click, without needing to say more, is something I value, though.

Perhaps there isn’t a great solution. I am thankful that anyone reads anything I write and grateful for the chance to hear your feedback, kind readers. Conversations are important to me, and I will take what I can get, scattered as they may be.

This isn’t the first time I’ve used this blog title, but it’s a good line from a good song (wonderland by mike garrigan, in his collapsis days). The bridge is: “And I’m going to hang on till the end / And all that could mean / Another year ends and then begins / It’s all just a dream / Still I’m going to love you where I stand / If I stand at all / Still I’m going to do the best I can.” It’s one of those songs that comes to me a lot, in the inaudible soundtrack that scores my life.

Today marks the end of my 31 day challenge of daily blogging. The kick in the pants has been good for me, and I hope to keep writing more here. Better yet, I resolve to.

Today also marks the end of a year, and a decade (I know, some people have big feelings about that and consider decades run from 1-10, but I am going to go with the majority on this one.) It’s been a long year, and a hard one, but the decade has been so short, so full. Time is a funny thing: the seconds press forward with regimented regularity, but the pace can vary from a crawl to a sprint.

New years bring new hopes, which is why people are so prone to resolutions. I hope, too. I could fills pages and volumes and shelves of libraries full of hopes. Mostly, I am resolving to do the best I can, and to be satisfied with that. To long, but to rest.

Links that have caught my eye this week:

+ Our friend Jon Black sent us an awesome early Christmas present of some Christmas music he created with other friends. He said we could share with our friends, too, so I am going to highly recommend you download this. I have enjoyed it immensely.

+ USA Today ran a piece about multi-site churches in their weekend edition. I liked seeing the contrast between Tim Keller, who has held out against video messages, and the rest of the movement.

+ How children best learn to read is a well researched and hotly debated topic. How they acquire basic math skills is not so much. I enjoyed this story in the New York Times about current neuroscience research regarding math.

+ The 2000-2009 Photoshop of Horrors Hall of Shame. As a parent of two young girls, these sorts of things make me livid.

+ Noughtyisms: some words coined this decade collected by the Guardian. The list is more than a little cheeky and may not be appropriate for young readers. One of my favorites: nom de womb.

… is kicking my tail. I don’t even know who reads this anymore and what the benevolent readers want to hear about. I haven’t finished a book yet this month (lame) so I can’t review any. Too much work, not enough focus and energy to read.

What do you like reading? Theological and philosophical musings? Anecdotes? Quotes? Reviews?

Marked nine years of blogging for me. I started in my teens in college, using what was then a relatively new website (blogger) to publish thoughts that really no one cared about. One of my first posts was a lament about missing an intramural soccer game, wondering if any other women would show up, hoping the coed Dandy Lions would not have to forfeit. COMPELLING STUFF. I am not sure that my voice has developed all that much, but I’m glad y’all have found me and stuck around.