bits, pieces

in the absence of substantive, original thought, here's a list of links to things i've read/thought about/noticed this week.

the books and culture's review of marilynne robinson's new book. the review's good on the whole, but it neglects a deeper examination of robinson's fathoms-deep novel. the new york times review is perfect.

conservative columnist kathleen parker calls on sarah palin to step down after palin's agonizing interview with katie couric (not to mention agonizing interviews with charlie gibson and, despite his best effort to throw softballs, sean hannity.) i wish mccain would deep-six palin and nominate tina fey.

friend brooke just hooked me up with the link to squash blossom farm's blog, a community supported agriculture startup in west omaha (something good can come from west o! how gratifying). the blog is about the first year of small-scale, community-supported farming. cool.

my true love*, paul newman, died.

i turned the corner on my third decade last week, and immediately felt wiser.






*other true loves include andrew, ben, anthony bourdain and george stephanopoulos, in that order. my parents very nearly disowned me when i alluded to my leetle crush on george.

a long post about sabbath

the blog posts are piled up in my mind like old papers. it's been an eventful stretch, since the last post. lots of characters. the most notable include a pageant queen who asserted that the bible is like her binder of beauty tips (no, i'm not making it up) and a stoned-yet-excruciatingly-attentive waiter at mark's (you're shocked, i know, to hear another story of the weird waitstaff at mark's. the food is good, really good, but mercy. the service).

what i really want to write about is how things went down on sunday. for ages we've been talking about our sabbath practices. if you're reading this blog, i've probably talked with you about it too. i've been uncomfortable with our sunday habits for a long time. we've shopped, eaten out, and caught up on work like it was any other day. in theory, i love the idea of the sabbath rest (more and more all the time, let me tell you). in practice, i find it very hard. neither of us were raised in "strict sabbatarian" households, so we never really thought about certain things being right or wrong activities for sundays until more recently. and i don't want to be a strict sabbatarian either. i just want to be mindful.

here's how it's looking to me right now. i want to put my work aside on sundays to honor god. i want to rest from consumer activities and commerce. i want time to share a meal with my family and friends and talk about scripture and the day's sermon. last week i drove through to get a coffee on the way to church. the friendly baristo asked what i was up to, and i said, oh, i'm on my way to church...and in my heart i felt wrong. i'm not a person generally given (in recent years) to feeling the conviction of the holy spirit, being, sadly, somewhat hard in my heart and spiritually doubt-ridden and thorny. but i had a little come-to-jesus right there in the car. here i am, i thought, driving my unnecessarily large vehicle through the starbucks line so i can take a cup of overpriced coffee, purchased at prices that exploit the coffee growers, made with milk from exploited and artificially-hormone-ridden cows, to church with me, where i sit among a lot of people struggling to make ends meet, let alone having a three-dollar beverage. this isn't right. this has nothing to do with worshiping god. (i am not similarly convicted about my latte monday through saturday. but.)

all these machinations were actually really freeing because they provided a moment of clarity and helped make a change. you all know this already. i'm slow. but i figured out that the key to observing a genuinely reverent and peaceful sabbath is planning. yes, planning. cue the flute music. if i order the week so that sunday is the high point, the day around which the other days are planned, maybe some sundays i can have a meal in the slow-cooker, a relatively orderly house, clean clothes to put on, and most essential, a cup of home-made, fair-trade brew to drink on the way out the door. thus, the day can, in the best of all worlds, be restful, and most of all centered on christ, whether with guests in the house or just us.

this past week, i did it. i planned and plotted all week so that we could have a good sabbath. and you know what? we did. it was an excellent sabbath. rest, pot roast, good conversation, time with our families, refreshment in christ. good enough to try again, i'd say.

fartsy fartsy

last night i spent two hours online looking for art to put on the bedroom wall. design*sponge provided links to over fifty independent artists - lots of brilliant etsy sites and others. the sheer quantity of greatness paralyzed me - and it was a pleasurable paralysis, i admit, but i got nowhere.

the ideal item would be:

big
composed in grays, blues, yellows and browns
thematically relevant to our household or abstracted enough to avoid theme altogether
cheap
optimistic, not prettypretty
appealing to ajw
a little bit modern, a little bit folk

i shall light a candle to the toothfairy and bring my petition. if anyone knows where else i should look, let me know.

i wake you up in the morning so early just to tell you i got the wandering blues

i've blogged for months about our efforts to promote a good night's sleep for ben. he's been a moving target when it comes to sleep, with a strong inclination to socialize between 1:00 and 4:00 am. multiple moves, vacation and teething thwarted us over and over. his new pediatrician, the terrific dr. loucks at children's physicians in dundee, made us a plan to adjust a few things. consequently we've had good sleep for six consecutive nights.

he's still sleeping now, thank ya jesus.

yesterday was the first day of the rest of our life

give a rousing cheer for andrew, who passed the bar exam (with a rather fine score, if i do say so) and yesterday started his job at kutak rock law firm. when we met, his ambition was the academy, but the path rambled in other directions and after three years of commitment and hard work in law school, we celebrate the new job with joy and thanks.

on slacking

do you ever think: gosh. i'm really doing a lot. i deserve a big pat on the back. i have a lot of plates in the air, and look, they're spinning and none have broken. then you see somebody else who's doing more, much more, and doing it with a little better style. one pinky extended very proper, so to speak. and you think, erm, hmm.

i don't like competitive people, and generally try not to participate in the little unspoken contests women hold about appearance, etc., ("let us each be fabulous in our own way," as my sister emily says), but man, i hate it when somebody makes me feel implicitly like a slacker because they cope with something beautifully - something that i can't really handle.

it would be comforting to extract some pearl of wisdom from this little meditation, but i don't have the brains right now, what with keeping my few chinette plates spinning and feeling slackerly. i'm going to watch a movie. will someone arrange a slacking contest for me to enter, please?