Summer Streams

I am sitting in my ducttaped computer chair in the area next to our dining room that we pretend is an office rather than the upstairs living room. Underneath my feet, crumbs from Frosted Flakes that my son, still wearing flannel pajamas, ate while reading about various Teen Titans episodes and characters this afternoon. It is 11:36, and I am getting tired. Today was a strange day, but still a good one, and that folks, makes two in a row for me. Rare. Vacation was good, but the drive home Saturday was exhausting and Sunday was the usual busy, crazy, not at all restful Sabbath that it should be, and I fully expected to have a major downer, depressing Monday. Thankfully, I was wrong. I believe it's got a little something to do with all that talk we had at small group about prayer and the Holy Spirit. Some of the things I heard must have fallen through the topsoil of my heart, still soft from all that vacation rain, and started sprouting. Last night, I went to bed with a major headache, and for most of today, I have felt extremely tired. (I think my body is trying to get used to eating real food again, and not being on the go as much as we were in Orlando.) But despite the lurchies and shakies, I have smiled and relaxed. After we got back from the pool today, my daughter donned her own winter time pajamas and joined her brother for popcorn and more Teen Titans, this time on DVD. I wanted to end here with some sweet example of the cuteness of my third child, but it is late, and I am tired, and nothing specific is coming to mind, although I promise you there were a lot to choose from today. Tomorrow a new month begins, here's hoping we rise up singing for many more mornings to come . Good night, friends. Sleep well.

Vay Cay

I'll be soaking it all in for a week down here with the palm trees and the tourists, taking the kids to you-know-where, spending too much money and obsessing over sunscreen. So if you don't hear from me, don't worry your pretty little heads about it. I'll be back in the real world soon enough, and my thoughts will continue to find their way onto your screen(s). By the way, I did post on Tuesday. Blogger is a little passive aggressive sometimes and thinks that if you return to a draft you started three months ago, said draft should be published on the original date, regardless of the day you actually post it. So much for planning and aiming to please. Pray for my kids to get the sleep they need to have fun and not be whiny. Oh yeah, I suppose I could use some of that too. See ya when we get back! Take care of you.

Hippity Hop

OK, so I missed my deadline this week. Sorry, wonderful readers. Been working on a couple of other things and ran out of time here. Luckily, one of those things paid off, and you can go check it out here. It may be a little familiar to a few of you, but hopefully you can see my growth as an editor and revisor! I guess sometimes the draft process can take a year or two. If you do hop over there, be sure and leave me a comment. And I will try to be faithful next week. Thanks a bunch, friends. Cheers!

Diet of a Lazy Southerner

GFIC -- French Vanilla

Breakfast:

pink cupcake (not strawberry, just pink)

1 strawberry pop-tart

milk

Snack at the pool:

saltine crackers

cheddar cheese

water

Lunch:

watermelon

1.5 cups boiled peanuts

iced tea (sweet)

Afternoon snack:

root beer cream popsicle

Dinner:

pork loin

white rice

2 crescent rolls

broccoli

1/2 can Big K Cola

10 o'clock snack:

more Big K

handful of candy Robin Eggs (from Easter)

more watermelon

And no, I'm not pregnant. So don't ask!

A goal and a post (not to be confused with a goalpost)

Summer is here at the Barber house, which means more family fun time and less me sitting in front of the computer time. Rather than bemoan all my wonderful, unfinished work, I've decide to set a small goal: one post a week. It's actually probably more than I've been doing lately, but here's the kicker (get it?): My post will be published on the same day each and every week this summer. Tuesday is the day I've chosen, so Monday nights are gonna be fun (again)! Don't be foolish enough to think I have an acutal hour deadline! But if I'm not in your google reader and/or you are not one of my "followers," you now know what day you can pop over and find me dressed and ready to go. 

For this evening, however, I have cheated -- just a little. The following post is something I wrote last Fall and thought I had published but was unable to find online today. Maybe I took it down for some reason I can't recall. The good news is it's been heavily condensed and revised, so even if it sounds familiar, I hope you'll see the betterness of it all. So without further ado, or football references, here it is:

Born to . . . dance? 

My daughter spins circles, curtsies, then leaps across the living room floor in her favorite faded rainbow dress. Ballet class is her inspiration, but watching her I think perhaps it is Dance that was first inspired by a little girl just like her. She tells us one day she’ll be able to twirl like a real ballerina . . . with her eyes closed.

We laugh and I tell her, “honey, no they don’t.” But today I remembered, dancing alone in that very same living room, it is better when your eyes are closed. That’s when the walls and dirty carpet disappear. Freedom dances in through the open window and its raised blinds shake off their former importance.

Raised blinds and see-through-windows have been much too important for too many years. Growing up in a small town Baptist preacher’s home, people couldn’t resist looking in, even when the shades were drawn. And those people might not approve if they saw me and my sister dancing to Elvis on the oldies’ station. But when Momma turned up the music and we thought no one was looking, Risha grabbed the small crystal owl from the display shelf for a microphone and I danced before a mirrored audience. Come Sunday morning, however, we donned our frilly dresses and patent leather shoes, braided our hair and sat like model citizens on the front row.

Dancing had absolutely no place in church, and I’m pretty sure I will never get over that. By the time I was in high school, a couple of praise choruses had made their way into our services. You might catch a few people clapping along, but emotion was reserved for the penitent during altar call, and even then you couldn’t let yourself get too carried away. Five verses of “Just as I am” was just about all the emotion we could handle.

Twenty odd years later, I attend a culture engaging church whose band plays loudly and some in the audience even raise their hands as they move with the music, but I struggle to relax and let go. There are still many times when the most natural, real responses in me do not seem appropriate, so I bend them back in place. And I’ve been wondering lately, is this what it means, for me anyway, to “grieve the Spirit?”

Back in May, my husband and I went to see Over the Rhine at the Bijou in downtown Knoxville. We had returned the day before from a trip to MD for my cousin’s wedding. We were tired and scattered, but my mother-n-law came through as a last minute babysitter and away we went. It was a muggy evening, but as we walked up the hill from the parking garage, I remember feeling cooled from the breeze. In fact, I remarked to John that this time of year, this time of night, dampness was usually a relief. And here I was in holey jeans and thin t-shirt with a chill. Why do I remember that detail? I’m not really sure. Is it important? Maybe it’s not. But the thing it reminds me of is how aware I was, of everything; how heightened my senses were.

I’d been listening to The Trumpet Child non-stop the week before and the day of the concert, I’m on a Roll was running ‘round my temporal lobe with glee. I even considered purchasing a pair of black flamenco shoes just for that night. In my head, I pictured it: me all decked out, flowers in my hair, dancing alongside all the other girls gathered beneath stage front right. We were smiling, rolling our hips from side to side, and clapping -- all delighted to share in the tangible warmth.

Sadly, the concert did not completely live up to this happy vision. I think it had something to do with the building. The Bijou, while a lovely venue, paled in comparison to the Tennessee Theatre we’d been to the year before for a Wilco concert. Then again, maybe it was the crowd that was different. College beer drinkers had swayed in the wooden aisles of the Tennessee Theatre and here at the Bijou, older academic types sat rigid on their cushioned seats.

For at least three days following the concert, Karin’s voice rang in my head, and I contemplated writing a song by song review. I so wanted to write a good story for Karin and Linford, one that might salvage the night from the cold crowd and clueless patrons, a story to wash the dirt off their tired feet and keep them going, clean and strong, as they finished out the tour. The band deserved a good tale, not because of how they were received, but because of how they had given. It was the gift of authentic, live music. And that vulnerable gift led me to dance. 

It was the beginning of the second song when this little, white, Baptist girl hopped up from her seat to find a deserted place in the wings of the mezzanine so she could groove without blocking anyone else’s view. I slipped off my flip flops, and began to sway. Barefooted, slow falling waves move me, my toes press diminishing circles into the worn red carpet. I close my eyes, snap my fingers and mouth the words I love. So what if the theater feels more empty than full? So what if the performers give off a slightly overworked and greatly underpaid vibe? What matters to me is the dancing. Yes, I'm completely alone and obtrusive, and maybe I'm not even any good, but I dance. And in my mind, we were all in heaven. 

Not the kind you see in Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercials either. My heaven is a hard wood floor in an open country kitchen. Wind rustling light colored curtains as dusk falls, miles of nature looking through the open windows of a wrap around porch as friends and instruments make music together. Singing and dancing, long into the night; we live a pastoral life together and nothing separates the performer from the listener but space.  

My dancing lasts exactly three songs, before the real world returns to me and I think it best to rejoin my seated, husband, date. After the concert he teases me about slow melodies not really being the kind of songs you dance to. My answer to him, “How can I not dance when Karin testifies that she wants to learn to love, without fear?”

“Did you just say testify?” he asks me.

Yes. I guess I did. 

No, this was not a Christian concert -- at least not as most Christians define one. No one prayed or gave a devotional, and no collection baskets were passed, but let me tell you, Jesus was in building. And I’m afraid not very many of us saw him. Then again, I’m not exactly sure how many were looking.

I’ve heard Wilco front-man, Jeff Tweedy, say that a good concert is what church should be like. When people in the crowd set aside their own individualities for a time and experience what it’s like to be part of something bigger than themselves. I have been in church services like that, but they are pretty rare. Maybe it’s the result of all that non-dancing tradition. Maybe it’s because we spend too much time with our eyes open, checking out the people around us, wondering if they’re checking us out.

I don’t have all the answers here and I don’t tell this story to try and fix everything about worship or crowds at a concert. (They’re not meant to be perfect anyway, just real, and shared.) The secret I want to tell you is this: we can’t keep complaining about how much the perfume costs and expect the tears to really clean our feet. The point is not what we give, but how. Whether we’re members or musicians, performers or even simple concert goers, the gift is in the bowing down, and the letting go. It’s in the crying and the laughing, the celebration as well as the repentance. And if you have to close your eyes to really dance, go ahead, you won’t miss anything you need to see.

Progress

Most days I manage a pretty even pace up this (un)naturally graveled hill. It's actually a mountain but the trees beside, in back and front, betray the budding view.

I hear your walking steps out there, the smush of leaves beneath your boots. The snap of breaking twigs. We're all out here, it seems. But rarely do we travel in packs. (Can't get into why just now)

When our paths do cross, I'm thinking you don't see that stack of pages trailing behind me. It's so small, why would you even look? Just a ragged pile of paper, faded, recycled blue; the middle of it bound with string and tied to my right ankle.

The torn edges bounce along, collecting dirt. Which is okay, like I said, the pages are not, were they ever? exactly fresh and new and white. Some times I stop to examine the dull pastels, the dingy yarn wrapped around them, and me. Who could believe these knots would last fo(u)r years?

But mostly I keep climbing.

Nothing that tiny could ever slow me down. Surely, you've even seen me running the smoother pieces of this trail. See how quick my step is on the rocks, how lightly I traverse. The slight hitch in my gait from the package below has become a natural walk. I disguise it rather well, don’t you think?

And on really lucky days, it suddenly feels like I’m flying, weighed down by not one thing. That’s when I call your name the loudest and beg you watch me soar on wings like eagles. I will never grow weary, running like this. My walk will never faint.

But some days – like yesterday. When I know today is coming and no one remembers but me. The bundle absorbs nine times its weight in water and I long for you to see. To slow up, get behind me.

Reach down and carry it for me, for now. I stop to ask; your shadow glides ahead. My lips part at the sight of your own trailing baggage and close at the sound of its bounce.

 

 

(different season, same feelings)

 

 

Linkin' Logs

One of our favorite singer-songwriters wrote a book a couple of years ago, and a sequel is coming out in August. Here's a website for the series.

AP's brother has also written a book, but has yet to find a publisher and is setting out to do it himself. You can read all about that adventure here. Tam, you may be interested in this one.

And lastly, if anyone out there is wondering what to get me for Mother's Day, just follow this link. My second favorite of this series, based on looks alone, is The Nine Peahens. I've never read that particular fairytale though.