Honey From The Rock

I just wanted to share the goodness of my evening. It's been my first spent simply at home. I read, blogged, played with the dog, did yoga, and ate good food. Also music, Lorene Scafaria's We Can't Be Friends has been playing itself into my head recently.

From http://www.holidayatthesea.com/?p=4051 I finished my first novel by Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood.  The novel, I think, is about salvation and the absence of grace. The main character, Hazel Motes, is a lost, restless man whose family is dead and whose roots are gone. He moves to a city where he meets strange characters, in particular a phony beggar who masquerades as a self-blinded preacher and Enoch, a half-insane boy whose life's only meaning is not his dead-end job at the zoo but his pulsing blood (intuition, feelings) that dictates his actions. Hazel Motes, obsessed with the reality of Jesus Christ and redemption, rebels against his grandfather's preaching and climbs on the hood of his car to preach "the Church of Christ Without Christ." The novel focuses on Hazel Motes as he desperately tries to find the truth without Christ; as he searches for meaning and salvation, he throws out the idea of a Savior. However, his means of salvation, his denial of g...

Earlier this week, I felt good. Handing out ice-packs, tying shoes, answering parents' questions, teaching archery, showing second grade girls how to paddle a canoe, playing with and taking care of my seventeen campers; basically being the best camp counselor ever. And I had a revelation: I'm better than I thought at my job. I realized that I was pulling off all my responsibilities with insight and laughter. I felt so good. (are you ready? I totally just set you guys up for that pride-comes-before-a-fall trick) Yesterday, I had a second revelation: I'm worse than I thought at my job. I yelled like crazy, even stood up on a picnic table and shouted like a maniac in front of the entire camp. Playing it as joke didn't diminish the feeling of relieved tension after I blew up, showing the authenticity of my anger. I also yelled at a group of boys, calling them out, trying to make jokes as I went, softening my rebukes, and every single joke fell flat. I finally just walked ...

I finished reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion just now. I expected to cry but I didn’t. not until the end did I tear up a little bit. Her grief for her husband was raw, very real, and compelling portrayed. She was able to meld her thoughts on death and her memories of her life with her husband into a unified, interesting reflection on time, change, and meaning.  She left certain things underdeveloped, like the idea of meaning in life; she raised the question but never answered it. But I think that is not what this book was meant to do; perhaps the question was never answered, this loose end never tied, because the book is simply a reflection of her actual life. She doesn’t know the answer to meaning in her life. I found this sad, these loose ends. They were real, raw, and intriguing as a firsthand account of grief, but there was something missing.  The last lines she writes are “You had to go with the change. He told me that. No eye is on the sparrow but h...

Let me just say, work has been trying my patience. I won't go into the gory, frustrating details, but today included: one vomiting child, two angry parents, seventeen second-grade girls, one uber-unorganized boss, four "co-counselors," and almost three hours of administrative paperwork and parent-handling. My feet hurt, and yes, to all my avid readers, I felt like cussing. (don't be too shocked...) But the good things, because as I said (in writing!) this blog will also chronicle blessings, are also numerous. To begin with: options. I have options. I have been praying about friendship lately and new avenues to discovering new friends in Macon, Georgia. and God has provided. I have four or five different groups of people I could invest in at the moment. Tonight there were two Bible studies that I was invited to (though I chose instead to rest after this particular Monday). Blessing number two: my mom's cooking. I know food has already come up before in the shor...

So I linked up to  Kendi Everyday 's 30 for 30  challenge that starts on June 13. If you're unfamiliar with her 30 for 30, you basically create thirty different outfits using only thirty items of clothing. For me, my wardrobe is extremely limited, and thirty different outfits is a big deal. (Not to mention my daily uniform as a camp counselor is gym shorts and t-shirts). So I'm tweaking the challenge a little. I plan on doing thirty outfits over the rest of the summer (about two months), instead of thirty days, and I'm also including shopping in the challenge (optional for this 30 for 30). Ultimately my goal is to build a wardrobe through creatively using what I already have and then purchasing some other items to round it all out. My hope is that by the fall I'll have a great foundational wardrobe once I go back to college.  Clothes have always been a struggle for me. In high school clothes showed what group you were in, and although I tried to model my outfits ...