This, the Feast Day of John Donne 1572 - 1631

In honor of this most great mystical poet: One of his Holy Sonnets.

(I would have preferred to do some creative cutting and pasting...but what could be better than the above link)

myers briggs

I was just attempting to add the prayer for my Myers-Briggs* type to my blog header. Darn. Couldn't make it work, artistically...yet... someone will come to my rescue...eh, Felipe? It would be fun to discuss Fr. C's type's prayer, but that's for another time.

I'm probably the only person who's almost flunked Myers-Briggs. I'm sorry, but some questions, in my mind, called for complex answers, i.e., 'none of the above' or 'more than one of the above'. And those choices aren't on the answer sheet. An exasperated Fr. C thought the test should be declared null and void...unless I picked ONE answer per question. Which was difficult to do because I don't like to be pinned down so.

So...I'm sort of an ENFP, unless I'm an INFP. Dragonfly or Damselfly. I shouldn't have to choose. That would be boring.

'Oh, Lord, help me to keep my mind on one thing at a -"O, LOOK AT THE BIRDIE!!!!!"- time.'

* According to the Jung/Myers-Briggs test available on this link, I'm a 'champion idealist'.

total addiction

I have my Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Chocolate Chips (60%) laid out on my desk like rows of cocaine. The purpose is actually to avoid excessive snorting of the product, which, if left to mindless reachings for the bag, would result in eating a whole bag daily. Three rows, five chips each. That might seem excessively restrictive. But don't feel too sorry for me. They're large, plump, rich, silken...oops, I'm e-drooling... and, I'm a total addict. Health benefits of dark chocolate aside, I do have a problem.

Five years ago I quit cold turkey. At first I didn't associate my dramatic symptoms with withdrawal. Then, I made the connection and confessed to my doctor. His response: Oh, I just finished reading a book on addiction subtitled "...from chocolate to cocaine".

There have been other periods of forced abstention, most notably when I'm ill (flu, etc). As I only get sick during times that are already stressful, throw in the withdrawal factor and you've got one cosmically ill woman who can hardly stand upright in her hellish existence. Not pretty. Eventually, I recover and feel revitalized and cleansed and intend to swear off the stuff for good. But, then, oh then...there is NOTHING like that first mouthful of GHIRARDELLI DOUBLE CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CHIPS, sucked into my cells and crying out, "Lucy*, I'm home!".

Which brings me to a point. I know my chocolate and have many favorite brands of bars: Valrhona (71%, also the candied orange peel or dark espresso), Green & Black's (any! Try the mint, ginger, currant), Moonstruck (Chile Varado: has a kick!). They fall in a rarified, classy category that inspires me to be a connaisseur. I'm thinking GDCC chips must have crack in them. This would explain the baser, addictive reaction. I'm sure I'm not the only one buying so much that the Safeway checker asks me what huge baking project I'm into.

I gladly give free samples. But the next one will cost you in the back alley.

*Not to be confused with Lucy-the-wonder-border-collie who once ate an entire 71% Valrhona bar and learned from the experience.

hedged in by a wall of cecil bruner roses

Fr. Carioca is trying his best to save the whole of the Anglican communion. Personally, I think he could do it. His intellect and heart, both huge, are in the right place. He eagerly debates, encourages, interacts. And though he occupies a place in the whole continuum that is definitely to the right of center, he can listen to the opposite point of view so thoroughly that he can paraphrase the heart of it back to them, accurately. His ideal world would include a communion of much more than just a bunch of folks who easily agree.

It would be a giant understatement to say I process things differently from him. At the time of our General Convention last June, with some very weighty things going on there (and Fr. C right in the middle of it, being one facet of a cross-section on an important committee), I wrote a spontaneous (note: don't try this at home when you've had a bit too much sake) e-letter to him, posted on our diocesan blog, using our dining room as an imaginary point of Episco/Anglican reconciliation. 'Let the community come to the table.' With a current crisis now threatening, I set out on a different journey.

As I walk through our neighborhood, I'm keenly aware of its grand past, its reconstructing present, and a future of probables and possibles. Formerly one of the finest areas of town, time and the natural propensity of life to eventually level things out caused it to decline. Yet, it has evolved into something perhaps greater than what it was at its inception. Originally mono-chromatic in all respects, it is now mixed in every way possible: economically, racially; types of dwellings, nearly mansions and far-reaching apartments; residents as renters, owners, rich, poor. The hospital I was born in is two blocks away – big, still a respectful part of the surrounding community. Our house is a few feet away from the shadow of the Roman Catholic cathedral – glorious, yet not pompous, a stable, beautifying presence for us. As I walk Lucy each morning, parishioners arrive for the first mass of the diocese. It feels good.

Yet, our neighborhood is not immune from expressions of unhappiness from our city's troubled youth. Along with other ‘unthinkables’ in its illustrious past: graffiti. It isn't rampant in our area; but when such self-expression is carried out, something new is usually the target. Across the street from the cathedral, newcomers to the neighborhood put up a lovely fence of beautiful, natural finished wood. It was quickly tagged. The fence was then painted. Tagged, again. Areas with the offending scrawls were covered with splotchy paint, a painful testimony to an act borne of human alienation. There it sat, seemingly defeated. Yet, over time, a unique countering strategy unfolded. Slowly, in the flower bed bordering the fence, roses were planted. Later, nails and string combined to form a twisted support, graffiti still part of the effect. Climbing roses have now reached the top of the fence, and some are quite full. There will soon be no room for 'new art'.

A few days ago, I detoured from my usual morning walking route to get a closer look at the area: Wow –bountiful bushes of Cecil Bruner roses are about to burst into bloom!! My heart leaped: 50 years ago, when my parents built a house on a humble country road north of here that ironically became one of the best streets in this town, our Cecil Bruner bushes were my secret garden. Their miniature beauty, symbol of sweetness, youth and happiness, captured my heart and imagination. Time was spent surrounded by legions of small, delicate, pink buds, which were cut and carefully woven into our braids or 'buns'. Now, my adult heart was bursting with remembrances of wonder and grace, immediately extended back to this moment in time.

Standing there, on that corner, my heart pictured another community gathered – this time, not by a polite dinner invitation extended, but rather by a forced corralling of all in a certain world-wide Communion. Closed in and encircled by a wall of Cecil Bruner roses, past, present and future would work their primal magic, bonding together until hearts are bound by strands of roses in sweet grace.

Through human hands, climbing roses cannot make a hedge or a wall. But in God’s hands, they may.

Photo courtesy of http://digitalfieldguide.com/blog/

Luscher Color Test

Oh, no. We can't be finished yet. Our 'self discovery process' simply would not be complete without the Luscher Color Test. Mr. Rogers might want to hide in a closet: This one delves into our deepest emotions and motivations.

My college piano professor got me hooked. I bought into it, and then bought the book. With it came 8 colored cards...rectangles with round corners...not too glossy...felt good in the hand -- these things count a lot with me. I took the test. It nailed me.

No heavy instructions are needed, nor does it ask for a commitment of a chunk of test-taking time. You simply put them in order of preference, from first to last, taking only into account the look of the color and its appeal -- not whether you'd like to wear it or anything like that. It's so simple -- but much much research went into it, and many many variables were addressed and considered.

Y'all might want to give it a try. If it's not your cup of tea, then stop by my house and I'll pull out my Martha Stewart 4x8 paint chips from her 'Araucana collection'. We'll deal them out, make up something that seems a plausible meaning for each...to our liking, of course. And then proceed directly to cocktails.

birds & bees...damsels & hummers...

A Sparkling Violetear Hummingbird
for that gem, Miz Minka

Isn't the essence of Holy Spirit captured in all things winged?

Occasionally, I'll have a dream where I'm not necessarily flying...yet stepping off a cliff results in a gentle wafting towards what would normally have a strong gravitational pull. The movie 'What Dreams May Come' portrayed a more sustained, heavenly floating which made me feel, well, rather homesick while watching.

On our bank of lavender at home, with tips of wands ready to burst into purple rufflettes, we already have baby bees seeking out the nectar. On their first day of doing so, they are usually accompanied by a huge black or velvety brown mom bee. She'll check me out -- hanging in mid-air, effortlessly, giving me the evil eye. At our previous abode, it was the white-blossomed dwarf myrtle that drew hundreds of babies for what I supposed to be their first real meal, their beating wings bringing breath to the air around it. Must plant a hedge of that on our current corner!

Next will come the dragonflies and damselflies, the latter being my current favorite for their fairy wispiness, vulnerability. One must almost 'see with the heart', invite them to appear.

Mourning doves have been pairing up in the neighborhood. I chide them for carelessly hanging out in the gutters, on the lawn, walking across the street. What are you thinking??? You're mating for life! Be careful!!! I wonder if one will be left, lonely, for The Duration. On campus, they nest in light fixtures; and then, for some stupid reason, they kick their babies out a bit too soon, much to the consternation of caring humans. The do hover, cajole, beckon, hopefully drawing the last little one into flight. Their innate sweetness and gentleness contrast with the scrub jays in our yard, who also send their young into the real world, barely ready. If Lucy spies one scurrying across the yard, not yet able to control its wings to flight, she descends -- focussed, undeterred -- effectively dispatching the moving target (she does seem bewildered by the conquest...as if it wasn't what she intended). I console myself with the hope that her action may save a hummingbird's life later.

For (at least) the past four years, a hummingbird has graced the university's student center with a nest under its eaves. She builds it in the same spot atop a pipe just under the ceiling, oblivious to the huge plate glass window that allows a careful observer to watch the miracle unfold. She doesn't always complete the project (reference: scrub jays). Right now, she is sitting on this year's diminutive throne, still as a statue, apparently incubating eggs. I can't wait for the miraculous process to begin...to see her, hovering in mid-flight, sustained by invisible wings, feeding her eager young. Two years ago, she successfully raised two fledglings (the normal size brood for an Anna hummingbird), finally attaching a lure of dead insects to the ceiling over their nest to challenge them to stretch and fly. In the end, with the nest flat as a pancake, barely hanging on by their claws and buzzzzzzing their wings like out of control propellers, in much less than a twinkling of an eye, they finally are gone.

Twenty-two Days in the Hummingbird Nest

is an amazing visual/textual record of the tiny miracle.

And now, a word from Gerard Manley Hopkins:

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Come, Holy Spirit

Cell phones from the Pulpit

Fr. Carioca brought it up in a sermon. So, now I need to exorcise the subject.

Yes, when he got his new cell phone from Verizon, they handily threw in a new one for the little woman, thus renewing our contracts for another year (or maybe two). I was initially grateful, but also a bit disappointed not to be a part of the process. And I'm just not sure that doing business in the Verizon lobby is the best way to be served.

My usual thing is to troll the internet looking for my next phone, checking reviews, seeing if I can get a WOW phone for free through a verizon middle man. All the 'boss' (that's a blast from the past!) phones are out there for $0. Yes, the plan might be a bit more and maybe a longer commitment. But, I like choices. And there's not too many of those for $0 in the Verizon lobby.

The bottom line is simple: WHAT I REALLY WANT IS A PINK PHONE!!!!!!!!! And apparently I'm not a big enough girl to have one. The RAZR phones come in pink, but are so high tech I wouldn't know how to answer one. I don't want to watch movies, listen to music online, etc, etc, etc... I just want a phone that's cute and easy to use.

So, ultimately, it's ME that's holding me back. My 15 day 'trial' is almost up. But it's really not worth it to see if they would upgrade me to a cadillac phone I don't need.

(I did, however, check for children's phones on the internet...just in case they offer a cute Hello Kitty one...)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

NEWSFLASH: Before I had a chance to post this, my office mate pulled up a Verizon online special for a RAZR phone. She printed it out and ordered me to go get the one I want! Took it in to Verizon and they made it REAL easy...

Personal DNA: Your true self revealed

Benevolent Artist

Spinning off of the 'visual dna' I first saw on Robyn's blog -- Check out Personal DNA

It's been a while since I dived in and received my fairly accurate self in an email from them (benevolent artist). But I was impressed with the artistic outcome and, above all, the unique way to express myself in answering their questions. In addition to actual words, they incorporate 'sliders', which give you an almost infinite range to pinpoint your answer. And there's a section that uses two axes to reference as you define yourself. Results are in two categories - 'about you' and 'how you relate to others'. It might just be the ideal 'Right Brainer's Guide to Self Knowledge'.

Enjoy!

When a t-shirt is a garden...or maybe just a corner

A yearly distraction in my day job is working on the creation of a t-shirt for an admission on-campus yield event. With the help of a local designer, we've exceeded expectations every time. Yet, there is often a 'creativity crisis' -- usually in the home stretch -- that causes me to question the wisdom of my playing a role in this project in the future. I just don't have the stomach for seeing something that is 'the ultimate' (OK..I know, it's just a t-shirt...), over-analyzed and picked at, watered down, fearing that it will end up with no personality, cleverness, appeal or attitude. I'm with AnnE of Green Gables —lack of imagination is intolerable.

On a whole-life scale, my passion for beauty in its perfect form is similarly intense, consuming, and dismayingly painful at times. It's something I cannot be casual about; and it's often fraught with disbelief at the preferences of others that have a different, lesser beauty-passionate view. I've certainly lived long enough to see where my own obsessions with beauty have led to imperfection and disappointment, time after time after time after time. (But, she says with an evil twinkle, if I were Martha Stewart and had gnomes to do my bidding...I would always succeed in setting the world straight!!!). Yet I desperately care.

Those who know me are undoubtedly tired of me rehashing this. But I'm still in pain over the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform our historic church's corner into a magical English garden, with beauty dripping at every turn, hidden corners whispering adventures to children, lush foliage hovering over rich mats of groundcover (no grass! no concrete!) — all tucked within and enfolded by our elegant wrought iron fence with two gates to welcome visitors. It didn't help that the process started with the undeserved death of a giant deodara cedar that had graced and flattered the corner for more than a half a century. I must add that some in the congregation were hoping I would chain myself to the tree to prevent the ax from falling, perhaps following a bra-burning ritual.

The journey from there was marked by meetings, divergent opinions, some quasi-designing, a grace-filled intervention that yielded a dream plan from a landscape professional, and a twist at the end that left us with a 'corner concept', rather than the garden my (and others') heart passionately yearned for. We're a downtown church. Rather than lifting passers-by out of the ordinary into the extraordinary, we have become 'one of them'. Maybe that's Gospel, Good News where truly belongs. But my heart aches.

So it's looking like the tshirt this year will be slightly closer to a corner than a garden. Next year — not my problem...