Local View 2

Social Network

I've long envisioned a utopia in which all the people important to me, all my friends and family, were all in one place. I miss those that are scattered across the country...I want my friends to know each other....

But poking around Facebook (which I've not YET taken the plunge to join), seeing people from work, high school, church, etc., recently cast question on that ideal. Would I really want people from all the different phases and parts of my life all in one pool? I have mixed feelings about that! I haven't decided yet if that's good, bad or both.

Failing to Eat!

Midway through a recent afternoon I realized I hadn't eaten all day!

I've known for awhile that my eating habits are too sporadic.

What contributes to this?

• Lack of good routines.
• Letting things that seem more urgent or interesting squeeze eating out.
• A large amount of meal times occuring either when I'm alone or at work.

It's easy to take underestimate the signficance of eating with other people and the variety of positive impacts this can have practically and relationally.

What shall I do to improve this situation?

How might these issues factor into my church's recently identified, but yet to be developed focus around our food shelf?

Do-able To Do Lists

In response to my to-do lists being too long, a reader suggested I focus my lists on one day or one room.

I think some of my lists should focus on even less. They should encouraging discipline for the specific times of day I know I'm likely to loose focus. They should acknowledge things that take up time that I don't factor in well enough.


Furthermore, what if I made my lists short enough that I knew I could actually accomplish them?


I keep making unrealistic lists. Sometimes I let myself think I could actually accomplish them. Other times I know I can't, but feel the need to keep all the things on the list, because they have to get done sooner or later, preferably sooner.

That's not helpful or rewarding. I suppose I need that big master list somewhere. But what point is there in taking on more of it than I can handle at a time?

Dark Picture

Yes, I know the photo in the last post is dark. When I first viewed it on the blog I thought it was a problem.

Then I looked got closer and looked more, as if letting my eyes adjust to the darkness and focus in. I could see enough. I even noticed something I really liked that I hadn't noticed before.

Is it just because I already know what's in the picture? Or can you see enough if you look closely? (I don't know.) If you need a hint, it's a view from a porch (or is it...no wait, I won't give the other perspective away).

Looking and listening closely, or not, creates interesting effects.

When I picked my car up from the shop I listened intently to see if the noise I took it in for was gone. The noise was gone. But I heard another I was sure hadn't been there before. Later when I wasn't paying attention, I heard that "new" noise again, and realized it was familiar.

Yesterday at the clinic the doctor asked if a certain sore little mark was always there. I didn't really think so. Walking back to my car I suddenly recognized the familiarity of that spot's discomfort.

What am I tuning out that I might want to notice today? What problem? What beauty? What presence? What question?

Local View 1

I love words. But sometimes it's so much work to try to communicate effectively with them.

You know the saying about pictures and 1,000 words.

This picture & others I imagine I might post mean something to me. I won't try to explain what on this blog.

I hope you you find them evokative in some way.

Children, Pets & Vinyl

Currently listening to: "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" on Crosby, Stills & Nash - on 1969 vinyl!
Playing on a portable self contained record player!

If you have kids or pets I'm sure you've noticed how they become ice breakers for small talk with strangers.

Guess what. Vinly does the same thing.

I had a fun little conversation with the clerk at the 2nd hand store where I got this LP and a stack of other cool finds (for 80 cents each). A stranger walking along in front of Target saw me coming out with the old style recored player, grinned and said, "That's fun."

She's right of course.

My List is Too Long Again

Why am I so often filled with discontent
over a to do list I can never satisfy?
No matter what I do,
There is always more.

My list is too long.

But my list is filled with good and important things.

Life is filled to overflowing with good things. (God said, "It is good.")

Which things is one person, with one lifetime,
60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day, 365 days per year
to choose?
How is one to let go of the rest
during 60 minutes, 24 hours, 365 days, or a lifetime?

I'm not looking for another scheme for organizing and prioritizing,
unless it's one that brings spiritual transformation:
clarity about the most important things for me,
patient discipline in engaging them,
and the ability to let the other good things go.

I really am only one human...60 minutes per hour, 24 hours, 365 days, how many years?
I really can only do so much.
What shall it be?
What shall it be now?

Carry Nothing

Of course the post below begs the questions:

• what are the basics?
• why carry anything else?

How little could I reasonably carry?

Could I carry nothing?

What were the disiples to carry or not in the story when Jesus sent them out?

Carry One Thing

I was out today planning to come home again before work.
Could I go right to work without going home if I needed or wanted to?
Oh no, I'd have to get my stuff.

What stuff??
All I need to do my job is myself. All other supplies are at my workplace.

The bag of stuff I always carry around because I might find a chance to get around to doing what I'm going to do with that stuff....

I never do of course.

New approach:

Other than the basics (wallet, comb, phone, etc.) and things I know I'll use (my lunch for work, letters I'll mail on my way there...)

I may only carry one thing. ONE. Carry ONE thing only.

Be free.

3 Easy Steps

3 Easy Steps to a more managable to do list.

1. Put today's date at the top of the paper
2. Write your to do list.
3. Add the words "The week of" in front the date.

In effect that's what I did today. I was quite prolific in writing my to do list. No writer's block there! If I can get it all done in a week I'll be happy. Maybe I should make that a month.

Keys

I reached in my pocket and pulled out a set of keys that aren't mine!

I'm sure someone is missing them. They've probably gone to a lot of trouble over their absence. There's a car key, the car's electronic lock/unlock thing, probably a house key, a few others that could belong to this or that.....you know, more or less the normal set of keys to our lives we all carry.

Whose keys am I carrying? How did I get them!?

They look enough like mine that I suppose I absent mindedly picked them up from somewhere they were laying, unconsciously assuming I was picking up my own keys. (Yes, I do have my own keys too.)

Where would have they been laying? Did I find someone's already lost keys? Or did the keys become lost when I picked them up?

I contacted people at the last few places I'd been. So far no one seems to be looking for the keys. Actually I think I may have even pulled them out of the basket we keep keys and miscellaneous stuff in at our house. Just pulled them out without looking at their detail and stuffed them in my pocket like I often do with my own keys.

How long have I had them? Could it even be that my husband picked them up somewhere? (Doesn't seem like something he would do.) Is there any other explanation for how they might have gotten into our house?

This is very strange. And I feel bad. But I don't know how to get these keys back to whoever they belong to.

It reminds me of stories I've heard about people who walk away from an event (or a bar) with someone else's coat. Same style, color and brand as their own....but not the same things in the pockets!....Yes, it was MY coat the keys were in....

Are you missing keys!?

Follow Through

I'm cleaning up my e-mail in box.

Clear evidence of my lack of follow through. Lots of old stuff in there.

What's this about?

• False ideas that I'll get around to reading something later.
• False ideas that I'll need to refer to something later.
• Short sightedness
• Putting off for a supposed better time what I should just deal with now
• Lack of organization for things that I really do want to follow up on
• Living for the ideal rather than living fully in the real

If I could clear up these issues, you don't know how much difference this would make in not just my e-mail in-box, but my life!

So, here's to continued progress...

Why Not to Become Ordianed

I was reading about the conflicts within the Episcopal Church yesterday: individual churches leaving or considering it, the deposing of a bishop, people talking about scism...

I should consider being ordained as a clergy member in this church!?! I should step myself right into all this debate and controversy?

It's not that I don't care about the issues at hand. It's not that I couldn't vigorously enter the debate. Its that I would find myself compelled to do it too much and too well. I would wrestle terribly long and hard with all the issues. Then I would write long, detailed, nuanced papers that few would ever read. I would be sucked in and consumed.

I'm Sick of It

I'm getting back to this blog because I'm tired of dealing with words. In fact I'm tired at the moment of dealing with meaning.

I've been spending even more time than usual weighing issues, words and meanings. I'm sick of it.

It's ingrained in me. I'll never be entirely free of it. Not that I really want to be anywhere close to that. But really, I don't need all those words. And I don't need all those wrestlings and wrangelings.

What would it look like if I just loved God and loved people (say like kids for starters) and forgot about anything beyond the most immediate here and now aspect of that?

What would it look like if I did the KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) thing that I've found so offensive of a concept when it has been applied to devalue good things that have led to my complex approaches and to in effect call me stupid?

Maybe I have been stupid sometimes.

What would it look like if I didn't even take my 5 min of editing these posts?

Like this.
There you have it.