Season's Greetings.

  I was helping out a friend of mine with organizing her closets, drawers, stuff and stuff.  She had a pile of things that she wanted brought to the thrift store.  In that pile were three books, all written by the same author, Perri O'Shaughnessy.  Instead of bringing the books to the thrift store I decided to bring them home and read them.  Beats me as to why I did it, I just did, I didn't even bother asking her what she thought of them.  I read the first one and I became hooked:-).  And I can't tell you how happy I am and how fun it is to be hooked on reading entertaining books at Christmas time, the perfect season to be hooked.  These books date back to the late 90's, early 2000's, set in a town on the California/Nevada border, mountainous, mystery murders...which reminds me of one of my most favorite Christmas memories (minus the murder).
  My mom's husband's family owned a home in Mammoth, California.  My brother, sister and I, our mom and David went up there for the week of Christmas to ski, late 90's.  I had just picked up Chaim Potok's The Chosen to bring with me on that trip.  I am telling you, nothing feels better than the memory of being in my downstairs bedroom, completely warm, wrapped up in a double bed and comforters, in my flannel j's, laying there for hours reading The Chosen.  (Since then I have read The Chosen two more times.  That is the only book I have ever read over and over again.)  During the day my family and I would ski.  I love to ski (albeit the cost is far outside our current pocket book now) and I particularly loved to ski with David because he challenged me.  He had grown up in the sport and was really good, so when I would ride the lifts with him, we hit areas of the mountain I would have never gone on alone.  And I love speed (in my next life I will either be a backing vocalist or a race car driver) so going straight down a mountain with lots of speed is good (or was good:-), it's been awhile, so I bet I'd be a little more cautious now--maybe;-)).  We played hard in the cold of the day and then on the eve of Christmas, we went to a midnight church service, quiet, softly lit, and sturdy pew-ed.  I love that memory.
  This year my husband and I and our pup (almost 9 year old yellow lab) are heading up to Michigan via roadtrip.  We are staying in a lake cabin about 10 miles south of my dad's.  The cabin is owned by an artist who owns a gallery in South Bend, IN.  I found it on airbnb and only after I booked it, did I start reading the reviews more in depth.  They say there's a lot of character in this cabin, a lot of charm, neat tchotchke's, with our bedroom overlooking the lake.  This will be the first time in 9 years that my husband and I have been up to Michigan together.  We will get to see my grandmother.  We get to go bowling and play TABOO with my dad and his wife.  I'm bringing my Perri O'Shaughnessy book (third one, I may need to get others!  O'Shaughnessy is actually two sisters who pen these books together. They are no Potok, but the read is fun all the same!).  I think I'm gonna love this memory, too.
Merry Christmas!  Happy New Year!  And as my New York husband says, "See ya's later!"

Dear God, It's me Ericka.

I am in a new place in our relationship, God.
I am discovering, 25 years in, what loving you is about.
In some ways it feels like we both are evolving.
Even though I have certainly heard before that you are the same,
yesterday, today, tomorrow (and
we are supposed to cling to that because that is part of your character
--the "world all around me is chaos, but you are the Rock on which we stand" kind of character--)
 and while I know that to be true
I also know that I find it intoxicating to say,
you are not the same God I met so many years ago.
And I am not the same Ericka.
Hopefully you like me more.  I like you more (and I liked you before, so this is saying a little something).
I think I am more accepting of
the silent, mystical
part of you because
Love has more meanings now.
Love has always been vulnerable (that's a monster part of its definition),
but now I am learning the dynamism of your love--like even when I'm stuck and waiting (which is a lot) you are still loving me.  I always want the movement forward kind of love, but sometimes love is still, doesn't move at all, and it's still love.
I think we've gotten to know each other more and best (and it has been this way the whole time) when I have tried to get to know you.
Our relationship does not come by osmosis.  It comes with me praying and the keeping on of praying. I have used your own stories to tell you what I am in need of--such as the Red Sea parting, or manna coming down from the heaven.  I think you like me talking to you that way.  It's like you're glad I am paying attention.
My prayers sometime put a light on your works and let you know that I like what you have done.  And I mean, what artist does not
1.) want their work referenced in a positive way, and
2.) like to be told their work is good.
Even you relish that.  Even you, God, want to be appreciated.  So, thank you, because while
I do not know a lot, I do know what matters.  We matter.  You matter.
Because really, what was the point of your death if people didn't matter?
But even more importantly, what was the point of your life, if people didn't matter?

Phil

My brother turned 30 about 10 days ago.  I spoke to him on the phone about a week ago.  He decided at this juncture in life that he wanted an adventure.  He walked and bused his way to Colorado from Southern California and found himself a job.  He told my mother that he slept under the stars.  He told me that he shaved using a lake as a mirror and a basin.  When I asked him about his bus ride, he described the people he sat next to as "old friends of God".  I thought that will probably be the loveliest description that I will ever have heard all of my life to describe a person.  I want to be described just like that.
Happy Trails to you, Philly Mousekewitz...until we meet again.  God be with you.  Love, your Sissy.

Today's snapshot

I went into work today for a gentleman I have known for almost ten years now.  I cared for his wife until she passed away last year, and this year he is a little in need of help himself at 89, so I go in one day a week to do whatever he sees fit to be done.  He spent over sixty years of being an optometrist, completely involved with the intimacies of the eye, the miracle, the science--but in the yard today I saw his artist coming out, designing perfect shapes and rhythms in his front lawn with some mulch and long strips of metal.  It really was quite lovely and affecting.
   As I was reflecting upon our time together on my 40 minute drive back home, I realized he paid me a compliment without probably even meaning to and I hadn't realized it in full at the moment it was happening.  His yard has a gradual slope to it and he has a hard time standing on the uneven ground.  He had walked up to where I was working to look at something, but then asked me for my hand to help him get back to even ground.  I stood up, held out my hand, he put his hand in mine and he gave me his weight.  He gave me his weight.  It wasn't filtered, almost weight, it was his real weight.  I remembered feeling the pressure and noting that he did need me.  And we walked back down the slope together.
  What I loved about any of this was that he trusted me with himself, with his balance, with his steadiness, and looking at us it wouldn't necessarily make sense.  He has often said that at my height and size I do not look as strong as I am.  He is a thin, 6 foot tall man.  I am glad that after all these years of working together, to care for his wife, care for their life, and care for one another, what he knows about me is found in how he trusts me.  It is wonderfully mutual and pretty incredible and I don't take it, not even for a second, for granted.
 

Fit, said loosely.

One of my favorite writers lived in Portland.  He sorta signified PORTLAND to me and to himself.  Organic, honest, thoughtful, creative, outdoorsy, natural, mountainous, architecturally stimulating, cool.  Portland, having visited once, took on a pretty strong pull to my sensibilities.
  I live in Raleigh.  Raleigh has been a hard fit, it has its special moments, but overall it has been tough.  So Asheville became my Portland.  I have wanted to move there for years.  Ess Gee and I have visited often, loved it often, hiked it often, dreamed about it often.  I just watched this interview where the Portland-living author moved to, of all places, D.C.  D.C.!  SOOO different than Portland.  But having heard his interview and having thought about it further...this person who identified himself so strongly with Portland, up and moved to a city that is very different than where his identity was and has made DC work and fit and have his being.  Hearing this oddly gave me freedom.  More freedom than I realized I was keeping from myself.
  I say, Raleigh is not my fit, Asheville is, but something about that interview made me wanna give up what I think "my fit" is.  Granted, I surely want to LIKE where I live.  And Raleigh is breaking me down:-), but I do want to leave my life open for more than I have been allowing myself.  I kinda wanna give over Asheville and say to God, anywhere, even if it's here:-).  It's like if he, who I thought was soooo Portland, can make a place like DC work, then I who am sooooo Asheville can make a place like Raleigh work:-).  Even Raleigh:).  I guess I don't want to be quite so rigid with my life because I want to leave it open for surprises...and freedom.
  And I guess if I think about it, I did make the move from San Diego to Chapel Hill, simply for fun.  I would like to revisit the girl who did that.  She got what I am talking about it:-).

Off the cuff

Stuff I've been thinking about:

  How when a person hurts you, or bothers you a whole, whole lot they tend to take on in our minds, only one dimension or a stereotype.  The pain caused by that person makes them flat.  That person becomes, "He doesn't do anything.  He never helps me.  She doesn't like me.  She's a bully." and sadly that's where they remain, unless we take out the light and the three-D glasses.  It is far too easy to reduce people to a sentence.  It is far harder to expand the conversation and ourselves.

I have been told that having a higher education can and may open doors that would not otherwise be opened to you if you didn't have that higher education.  In this way it is a bit of freedom.  But, on the other hand, I have also noted, where having a higher education becomes a hindrance to freedom (and I am not talking about the accumulation of debt).  I think there is the modern (as in not post-modern) of you get a degree and you use that degree.  I have a few friends with PhD's that do not like doing what they are doing with that degree, but instead of feeling the freedom to explore anything, the DEGREE speaks louder than they do.  What if you looked at the degree as just a part of your life's journey and not strictly the dictation of what you will and have to do.  I thought about Olympians, and why they go for the medal.  They aim for the gold, why?  Because it's an accomplishment not many in the world may do, but what do they really do with this accomplishment?  They can feel proud of themselves.  It satisfies something in them.  Satisfies something in others.  They sacrificed a lot to feel this.  The medal does give them a voice and a platform that they did not have before.  Maybe it's the same for higher education?  It's a large sacrifice, one they can been very proud of (and other people can be very proud of them, too), and they can speak from a place of authority because of their accomplishments.  But with that being said, I know women who have said, "I have this degree, it is good, but it is not all of me."  Some have chosen a completely different route than the degree would lend itself to traditionally, but nothing in life is wasted.  I went 4 semesters to a four year university.  I did not finish anything there, but the life I lived there and the relationships I have built there have and will sustain me for a lifetime.  Don't get me wrong, if the degree works for you in the field you are in, then great, but the bottomline, don't let it speak for you.  Don't let it hold you back because you think you owe it to that degree. I wanna ask, so if you set the degree aside, if it wasn't there, then what might you do?  Be more true to you, than it.

I was reading Ezekiel, chapter 37, of the Bible.  God was very, very active and specific in the visions of Ezekiel putting dry bones to good use all so others would know who God was.  I told my husband last night that sometimes I think God is too subtle for my liking:-).  There's nothing subtle about Ezekiel 37.  No wonder I gravitate to the stories in scripture that convey the Red Sea parting, a burning bush that is not burnt, water into wine, one loaf of bread becoming many loaves without the use of a stove or baker.  All those things are so in your face.  Sometimes I need God to be in your face.  I have learned from the long walk of my faith to see things through a crack, but sometimes I would really love an obvious, "What the...?!?!" And we'd go from there, ya' know?:-)  

Spring Cleaning

refill the sugar bowl,
       the butter dish,
       the candy jar.

two layers of white paint
         on two drawers,
            a cabinet,
                a set.

throw out the spare this,
  the extra that,
the something or others.

bring down
     the clothes rack.
bring out
     the citronella candle.
bring in
     the newspaper.

Need to purchase:
  birdseed
  flower seed,
  a trowel.

Oh, and I must paint ANYTHING
Behr's Licorice Stick red:-)
(photo compliments of www.melandliza.blogspot.com)